In Kenya, it is extremely difficult to obtain the prevalence rates of violence by husbands against their wives because the problem in many cases is still accepted as a cultural practice or a private affair and thus is rarely reported to authorities. Nevertheless, reports in the popular literature and magazines indicate that the problem exists in serious magnitudes. This exploratory study sets out to examine the prevalence of physical, sexual, and emotional violence by husbands against their wives in the Maseno and Nairobi areas of Kenya. The Institutional Review Board at the University of Texas at Arlington approved the study as part of the author’s doctoral studies. Of the 208 women who participated in the study, 49.5% reported a history of violence. Prevalence rate for physical violence was 45.7%, sexual violence 12.9%, and emotional violence 39.4%.

Introduction

Violence against women is a serious violation of human rights. This worldwide phenomenon is perpetrated against women in many forms, such as intimate partner violence, sexual violence, trafficking, forced prostitution, physical and sexual violence against prostitutes, sex selective abortion, female infanticide, deliberate neglect of girls, and rape in war.1 Other forms of violence against women include inhumane cultural and religious practices, such as female genital mutilation, dowry killing in India, and Middle Eastern honor murders.2

Violence against women is a serious global health problem
associated with a range of health concerns such as physical injuries, emotional and psychological complications, sexually transmitted diseases, and pregnancy complications.3 In addition, a World Bank report pointed out that violence on women accounts for as much health problems and death in women as cancer, and surpasses both road accidents and malaria combined as a cause for health problems for women.4 This phenomenon transcends national boundaries, geographic locations, socioeconomic status, culture, religion, and ethnicity.5

Although violence against women has received increased
scientific, public, and policy attention over the last two decades, there is still a paucity of scientific research on the problem in Kenya. A review of the literature on domestic violence reveals that to date, no national or community-based scientific study has been carried out to examine the prevalence of physical, sexual, and emotional violence against married women in Kenya. Although no national prevalence statistics for Kenya are available, the Kenyan Chapter of the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) estimates a prevalence rate of about 50%.6

In an effort to fill a crucial knowledge gap, this exploratory study sets out to examine the prevalence of physical, sexual, and emotional violence committed against women within a marriage relationship in the Maseno and Nairobi areas of Kenya. For the purposes of this study, violence is defined as any act perpetuated by the husband that is harmful to the wife. This includes physical attacks, threatened physical attacks, psychological or emotional hostility, sexual assaults or threatened sexual assaults, and neglectful conducts.

LiteratureReview

Over the last two decades, the evidence of the scope and significance of violence against women has increased throughout most of the world. In the United States, estimates of the prevalence of violence against women suggests that nine hundred thousand to three million women suffer abuse at the hands of a partner each year.7

In Europe, numerous national studies on the prevalence of violence have been conducted with varying results. The prevalence estimates range from 6% in Switzerland 8 to 26.2% in the Netherlands.9

In Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, it is very difficult to get scientific information on the prevalence of violence against women, as it appears to be extremely under-reported. Specifically, in sub-Saharan Africa, empirical evidence is limited to a small number of studies. The prevalence estimates for South Africa is 46%.10 In Tanzania, the reported rates are 45.7% for verbal abuse, 37.6% for physical abuse, and 16.3% for sexual abuse.11 Due to under- reporting, common in many survey studies, it would be safe to assume that the true prevalence estimates in most countries are probably higher than what is reported above.

Theories of Domestic Violence

Numerous causal theories have been developed to explain violence against women. These theories can be broadly placed into six categories as follow: 1) biological 2) psychological, 3) systems theory, 4) sociological, 5) social structural, and 6) nested ecological model.

Biological models focus upon three general approaches to
understanding the etiology of violence against women: organic, genetics, and neurochemical.12 For example, head injuries that result in brain infections or other changes in the structure of the brain have been reported to put a person at an elevated risk for becoming violent.13

Psychological theories, like the biological models, focus on individual factors. However, unlike biological models, psychological theories do not focus on organic causes. Rather, the focus is mainly on individual personality traits or on childhood and other past experiences that are assumed to shape individuals to become violent in adult relationships. Factors such as stress, hopelessness, self- esteem, childhood abuse, and childhood exposure to violence are often analyzed under this perspective.14

Systems theory locates the causes of violence against women
within the nuclear family unit. Within this theory, wife abuse is viewed as a problem within the family unit dynamics rather than just as a problem with only the abusive husband. Violence is viewed to take place within unique relational contexts in which all family members interact to maintain the family system. Wife abuse is thus regarded as a family dysfunction, with both the husband and wife contributing to the problem.15

Sociological theories of domestic violence shift the focus from micro-level to macro-level analyses. Instead of looking at individual factors in isolation, the focus is widened to include factors in the families of origin, societies, and cultures. A key approach under the sociological theories is the social learning theory.16

When applied to the sphere of domestic violence, social learning theory postulates that observing and experiencing violence in the family of origin and/or within a broader society is a contributing risk factor to being violent.17 This perspective is commonly referred to as the intergenerational transmission of violence when applied to family violence.

Similar to sociological theories, social structural theories of
domestic violence analyze the etiology of wife abuse at a macro-level. This perspective postulates that wife abuse is rooted in the structure of societies rather than the organic pathologies or personality traits of individual men.18 A key approach that fits under the category of social structural theory is feminist theory. The feminist approach attempts to explain domestic violence by focusing on gender analysis of power.19 Wife battering, in this case, is seen as a method through which men seek to control women.

The nested ecological model considers a wide variety of factors
that interact at different levels within a broader social environment to cause family violence.20 It attempts to analyze the etiology of violence against women at four different levels: ontogenetic, microsystem, exosystem, and macrosystem. The ontogenetic level focuses on risk factors that increase the likelihood of domestic violence at the individual level. These factors may include biological or organic factors, individual personality traits, or individual developmental experiences that are assumed to shape one to become violent. Within the microsystem level, the focus is on relationship patterns within a family, family stressors, and structural factors of the family. The exosystem level focuses on factors at the community level. For example, unavailability of jobs or a steady income 21 and high levels of community crime have been found to be risk factors for domestic violence.22 The macrosystem level focuses on factors at the societal level such as societal cultural beliefs and values in relation to domestic violence. For example, wife abuse in South Africa may be viewed as a reflection of the country’s widespread culture of violence that affirms violence as a conflict resolution method.23

Method

This study employed a non-experimental, ex-post facto design to measure the prevalence of physical, sexual, and emotional violence against married women in the Maseno and Nairobi areas of Kenya. Data for the study was collected via a quantitative survey conducted using a non-probability, purposive sampling procedure. A total of 208 married women participated in the survey.

The incidence and prevalence of physical, sexual, and emotional
violence were measured using the Partner Abuse Scale: Physical (PASPH) and the Partner Abuse Scale: Non-Physical (PASNP). Both the PASPH and the PASNP were developed by Walter Hudson.24

The starting point for recruiting participants consisted of visiting
local women groups at local universities, churches, market places, and neighborhoods throughout Maseno and Nairobi areas of Kenya. Four trained female research assistants contacted potential participants on behalf of this author and those who agreed to participate were asked to complete the survey. Those who agreed to participate in the study helped to recruit additional participants from among their acquaintances. The survey was presented as an anonymous and voluntary study, with no names or identifying information requested.

Data Analysis

Three levels of statistical analysis were conducted on the data from this study. First, an initial univariate analysis of the data was performed, with descriptive statistics conducted to summarize the data in a manageable form. Second, bivariate analysis was conducted on each predictor variable and criterion variable to determine the individual effects of the predictor variables on the criterion variable. Lastly, multivariate analysis was conducted using logistic regression in order to detect the presence or absence of the criterion variable based on a set of predictor variables.

With a dichotomous criterion variable, chi square tests were performed in cases where the predictor variables are categorical variables and t tests were performed in cases where the predictor variables are continuous. All predictor variables that were found to be significant were included in the multivariate analysis.

Multivariate analysis was conducted using logistic regression in
order to detect the presence or absence of physical abuse based on the various predictor variables. Logistic regression was deemed most appropriate due to the use of a dichotomous criterion variable as well as the use of both continuous and categorical predictor variables.

Findings

Participants in the study ranged in age from 19 to 64, with a mean age of 33.48 years. Participants’ husbands were slightly older, ranging in age from 21 to 70, with a mean age of 36.75 years. Participants had been married an average of 8.75 years, with a range of 1 to 41 years of marriage. The median number of children per family was 2, with a range of 0 to 8 children per family.

Participants’ level of education ranged from 4.8% having no formal education to 7.2% having a graduate level education. Almost a third, 28.8%, of participants reported that they had a secondary education. Concerning participants’ husbands, 2.4% had no formal education with 9.1% having a graduate level education. Over a fourth, 27.8%, of participants’ husbands had a secondary education. Concerning employment status, 64.9% of participants were employed, compared with 87.5% of their husbands.

Of the 208 women interviewed, 49.5% (n=103) reported having suffered some form of violence from their husbands. Prevalence rate for physical violence was 45.7% (n=95), sexual violence 12.9% (n=27), and emotional violence 39.4% (n=82). All the participants (100%, n=27) who suffered sexual violence also suffered emotional and physical violence. Additionally, almost all of the participants who suffered emotional violence (90%, n=74) also suffered physical violence. Only 3.8% (n=8) of the women suffered emotional violence without accompanying physical or sexual violence.

Participants who had experienced any form of violence had
significantly less education (M = 3.46) than did participants who had not experienced violence (M = 4.42). Similarly, participants who had experienced violence had husbands who had significantly less education (M = 3.73) than did participants’ husbands who had not experienced violence (M = 4.83).

Additionally, almost six times as many participants, 61.1%, who had experienced violence were not employed. This figure compares
to 10.6% of participants who had not experienced violence who were not employed. Furthermore, almost seven times as many,
23.2 %, of participants who had experienced violence reported that their husbands were not employed. This figure compares to 3.5% of
participants who had not experienced violence who reported that their husbands were not employed. No significant associations were found between wife abuse and the number of years of marriage and the number of children in a household.

Summary and Conclusion

In this study, almost half of all the women participants reported having suffered some form of violence from their husbands. However, because of the private and sensitive nature of domestic violence in many areas of Kenya, it would be safe to assume that the true prevalence estimates are probably higher than what is reported in this study.

The findings of this study supports those of previous studies
that reported that women with low educational attainments are at a higher risk for domestic violence,25 and that males with lower levels of education are more likely to be abusive to their female partners.26 However, other studies have reported that there is no significant association between risk of violence and either a woman’s educational attainment or a male partner’s educational attainment.27

This study also found that unemployed women were at a greater
risk for domestic violence than those employed. Other studies have reported that a woman’s access to independent income increased her risk of experiencing domestic violence,28 while yet others have reported that the effect of a woman’s employment status is insignificant to her risk of violence.29 Further cross-national studies are needed to examine the factors behind the seemingly contradictory findings.

Consistent with the findings of this study, unemployment of a male partner has been reported elsewhere to be associated with increased risk of violence on women.30 Previous studies have also shown that employment in low-status jobs increases the odds of male to female violence.31

Although the findings of this study cannot be generalized to all
of Kenya, the findings do suggest that a large number of women in Maseno and Nairobi areas are suffering violence in the hands of their husbands. This phenomenon seems to be pervasive even though the Kenya Government is a signatory to the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).32 As a signatory to that convention, the Kenyan government is obligated, among other things, to eliminate violence against women in all its forms.

To make any progress in reducing the prevalence of violence
against women in Kenya, significant changes in governmental and societal attitudes towards domestic violence must be undertaken. Strategies to address the needs of abused women in the short term and to combat the root causes in the long term must be instituted. Public educational awareness programs must be developed to sensitize the citizens to the fact that violence on women is dehumanizing, illegal, and has serious health consequences. Additionally, provision of shelters and support services for abused women must be made available.

Although more research is certainly warranted to study violence against Kenyan women beyond Maseno and Nairobi areas, perhaps the findings of this study could play a modest role towards the efforts to liberate abused Kenyan women from the bondage of violence they suffer silently in the hands of their male partners. All Kenyan women deserve to feel safe in their homes.

32 United Nations, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (New York: United Nations General Assembly, 1979).

]]>http://www.campbellsville.edu/correlates-of-violence-against-married-women-in-the-maseno-and-nairobi-areas-of-kenyaCauses and Lessons of the Holocausthttp://www.campbellsville.edu/causes-and-lessons-of-the-holocaustThu, 15 Aug 2013 05:00:00 GMTVictoria J. BarnettVictoria J. BarnettCauses and Lessons of the Holocaust

Victoria J. Barnett

Remarks given at the Kentucky Heartland Institute on Public Policy,
Campbellsville University, Kentucky, September 17, 2007

Between 1933 and 1945, an unprecedented reign of terror left its mark on human history. With its vicious policies against the Jews and others viewed as “inferior,” as well as in its expansionism and the terrible war and occupation it brought throughout Europe, National Socialism in Germany unleashed a wave of destruction that ultimately swept all of Europe.

Simply in terms of the numbers alone, the impact is stunning: six million Jews, one and a half million of them children, perished in the Holocaust. There were literally thousands of concentration camps. More than 200,000 patients – most of them mentally ill or physically disabled–were murdered in the so-called “euthanasia” program. Three and a third million Soviet prisoners of war died. The Soviet Union lost over 14 million civilians, including between 1.0 and 1.5 million Jews; while Poland lost nearly 5 million civilians, including nearly 3 million Jews. Germany lost over 2 million dead and another 2 million persons remained missing.

Yet the impact of this history goes beyond the numbers, and I suspect that is why I am here this evening. People care about what happened in the Holocaust. We are profoundly moved and troubled by this history. We sense that it holds important questions and lessons for us today.

The Holocaust is the term most commonly used for the state- sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of the European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims—six million were murdered. But Gypsies, the physically or mentally handicapped, and Poles were also the victims of Nazi policies based upon ideological notions of “racial purity” and national superiority. There were many others, including homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and political dissidents, who were targeted for political reasons.

There are historical explanations that help us understand some of what happened. At the same time, however, there is much we cannot understand, and I believe this is one reason that this history continues to haunt us. In so many ways, the Holocaust is inexplicable. Nazi persecution and genocide of Jews was not the outcome of a civil war, protracted conflict, or a territorial dispute. Jews posed no threat whatsoever to the German nation. In fact, despite the drumbeat of antisemitic propaganda throughout the 1920s and 1930s that portrayed Jews as a serious threat to the German nation and its culture, Jews in Germany in 1933 comprised less than 1% of the population and they were loyal, patriotic, upstanding citizens with deep roots in their country. It is poignant to read the accounts from the early months of Nazism of how German Jewish war veterans of World War I visited the local police, war medals in hand, to protest the new laws against them and insist on their patriotism. The rise and spread of National Socialism in Germany led to the emigration of some of its most brilliant scientists, scholars, artists, and writers: people like Albert Einstein, Paul Tillich, and Thomas Mann.

There was absolutely no reason, in other words, for the new government that came to power in January 1933 to unleash a steady campaign of discrimination, persecution, and ultimately genocide against the Jewish population of Europe. Yet the mystery becomes even more troubling when we look closely at the details of this history throughout those twelve years, for the Holocaust is not the story of the persecution and murder of the Jews by a small cadre of ideological fanatics. It is the story of widespread complicity and the involvement of “ordinary people”–people like you and me.

The vast majority of the German population embraced Nazism–they welcomed it and benefited from it. Many of them became active participants in that police state, turning on their Jewish neighbors or remaining silent as the persecution was unleashed. Germany was a civilized, highly educated, predominantly Christian country; over 90% of the population, in fact, was Christian. Yet during the course of twelve years under Nazism, we find countless doctors, scientists, university professors, church leaders, and other professional leaders not only making their peace with National Socialism but benefiting from it and, in some cases, becoming part of the genocidal machinery. There were doctors who signed forms so that their patients could be murdered in the euthanasia program, and doctors who performed unspeakable “experiments” on children in the concentration camps. There were internationally renowned professors who remained silent when their Jewish colleagues were fired, and there were church leaders who defended the measures against Jews and gave religious legitimacy to a genocidal regime. There were police officers, sworn to uphold public order, who stood aside to let the mobs beat up Jewish citizens and torch their businesses and houses of worship. There were members of the military who not only invaded neighboring countries but rounded up and brutally slaughtered the Jewish population as they marched through. Even today, we continue to find mass graves throughout Eastern Europe where these events occurred. And there were the corporations, industries, and banks that actually profited from the ravaging of Jewish life in Europe. Ultimately, 8–12 million human beings worked as slave laborers under the Nazi regime. Some were inmates in concentration camps who worked in stone quarries or assembled armaments in factories. Others were prisoners of war; still others were civilians from Eastern Europe. Even some church institutions used slave labor. In the year 2000, the Protestant Church of Germany finally acknowledged that church hospitals and other institutions had used slave laborers and contributed around $4 million dollars to the compensation fund.

While there was little outright support for all this in the outside world, the reactions of the international community ranged primarily from silence to cautiously phrased opposition to (in all too few instances) rescue. Some local populations in surrounding countries joined in the killing of Jews. Others courageously hid their Jewish neighbors. There were diplomats like the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg and Msgr. Angelo Rotta, the Catholic nuncio in Budapest, who produced hundreds of visas to enable Jews to escape. There were Germans like the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who as early as 1934 warned that “you can either be National Socialist or Christian; you can’t be both.” Bonhoeffer later became involved in the conspiracy to overthrow the Nazi regime; he was imprisoned in 1943 and executed in 1945. There was a network of rescue that included the French village of Le Chambon, which rescued around 3,000 Jewish children.

And yet these individual responses were not enough to stop the Holocaust, and the overwhelming evidence is that the responses at the time were largely characterized by apathy, silence, and a general failure to stop what was happening and rescue the victims. Holocaust history gives us all too many symbols of this: one of the starkest symbols is the ship St. Louis, which in 1939 left Europe with 937 Jewish refugees who believed that they had escaped just in time. The ship sailed to Cuba and Miami, desperately seeking a safe haven–and had to return to Nazi occupied Europe because no country, including the United States, would take these refugees in.

How did all this happen? There are certainly some historical explanation for the rise and popularity of National Socialism in Germany. The aftermath of the First World War ushered in a turbulent decade of political and economic instability, as well as social change. There was widespread resentment against the international community for the reparations that had been levied against Germany. Most Germans believed that their country had been made the scapegoat for World War I. These emotions converged with a strong anti-Communism (many feared a Bolshevik uprising in Germany that would parallel the successful revolution in Russia) and a deep nationalism that had its roots in the Bismarck era when Germans began to consider: what did it mean to be German? Who were the “German people”? How should the German nation be defined? Even in the late 19th Century, this discourse took on ethnic contours, and this coincided with the birth of a different kind of antisemitism that viewed the Jews as a “race.” The word itself was coined during the 19th Century by Wilhelm Marr, a German publicist who subsequently founded the League of Antisemites.

Yet, of course, hatred toward Jews had existed for centuries, and the “new” antisemitism was simply the convergence of racist ideas (which would subsequently become the definitive core of Nazi anti- Jewish ideology) with widespread popular prejudices that had been present throughout Europe for centuries and which had been fed by the Church’s “teachings of contempt” against the Jews.

All these historical explanations of the root causes of the rise of National Socialism, however, take us only so far. Both the sheer scope of this genocide and the phenomenon of complicity raise profound questions about human beings and what we are capable of, about what it means to be a citizen, about how to prevent our civil society from such a descent into barbarity. There were some, even at the time, who recognized that these events confronted human beings with profound political and religious questions. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Protestant theologian and pastor who joined the conspiracy to overthrow the Nazi regime, wrote to his fellow conspirators in 1943: “We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use?”

Bonhoeffer’s question continues to haunts us because it opens the door to the very similar questions we face today. Are we today of any use? Have we learned anything from this terrible history? In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the phrase “Never Again” was often repeated, and yet the last half of the twentieth century would seem to render these as empty words, since in the interim the world has witnessed the murder of millions in Cambodia, Rwanda, and today we confront the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of the Sudan. How does an understanding of the history of the Holocaust shape our reactions on the personal level and on a global level to evil, to mass violence, to prejudice, genocide?

In exploring these questions–in drawing lessons from the Holocaust–we need to simultaneously address and respect both the particularities of the history and the universal lessons. This task is not always easy and it is easily misunderstood. To say that the Holocaust is unique is not at all to diminish or discount the horror, evil, and suffering in other historical instances, whether that be the history and legacy of slavery in this country, the Rwandan genocide, or other historical atrocities. But there are lessons of the Holocaust that are rooted in very specific aspects of the history–lessons about antisemitism, about complicity, about the convergence of nationalism and prejudice and how that becomes policy.

When the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum opened its doors in the spring of 1993, its founders hoped that there would be enough people interested in this history and these questions–that we would get visitors, school classes, and other groups interested in this history. But what we have witnessed in our work has so far exceeded our expectations that I think this tells us something both about the history and about its contemporary relevance. Since the Museum opened we have had over 25 million visitors, including 8 million schoolchildren. Ninety percent of our visitors, incidentally, are non-Jewish. Over 5,000 church and synagogue groups have visited. More than 86 heads of state and over 3,000 officials from 131 countries have come. Our website last year had 15 million hits. We’re translating portions of our website into Arabic and Farsi and the number of hits from those countries has jumped significantly.

We are a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. Obviously the commemoration of and education about the Holocaust must be based first and foremost upon its documentation. This was the spontaneous response of General Dwight D. Eisenhower when he first encountered the aftermath of Nazi atrocities when he liberated the camp at Ohrdruf on April 12, 1945. He immediately ordered that military officers, reporters and photographers document and testify to what they had witnessed, so as to prevent any possibility of denial later.

Thus, the Museum has an extensive and still growing collection of documents of this history:

• Over 12,530 artifacts and artwork
• 42 million pages of archival documents
• More than 77,000 reference photographs
• 194,915 survivors and their families; from 49 states and 59 countries, are listed in the Meed Survivors
Registry
• Over 9,000 oral histories
• Over 985 hours of historical film footage
• More than 72,000 library holdings in 55 languages

What many people don’t realize is that the Museum has an extensive educational and research programs for people from all walks of life, and here, too, the reception to these programs has been stunning: 10 years ago Charles Ramsey, then Chief of Police in Washington, DC, visited the Museum and was haunted in particular by the images of German police. He decided that every entering class of police officers for the District of Columbia should visit the Museum, learn something about this history, and talk about its lessons for the challenges that they face in law enforcement. Since then, over 32,000 police officers and recruits have attended workshops at the Museum. Over 7,000 FBI agents have attended our programs as well. We have similar programs for the military. Every fall the entering class at the U. S. Naval Academy visits the Museum for three days. Nearly 200 cadets from West Point come every year. We have held programs for judges. We have a number of programs for teachers, both at the museum and in workshops throughout the country, which have shaped the teaching and curriculum about the Holocaust in thousands of classrooms.

My own field of expertise is the history of the churches’ response to the Holocaust, both inside and outside Nazi Germany. That history unfortunately is dominated far more by silence and complicity than by rescue and courage. But it’s a crucial part of this history that very much shapes the ethical lessons we seek to draw from it. In my own work, I work with church groups of all denominations and religious groups of all faiths, as well as with seminaries and religious studies departments who train clergy and academics. The participants in these programs reflect the religious diversity of our country; they range from liberal Jews to evangelical Christians to Catholic clergy to mainstream Protestants to devout Muslims. Each of them brings a different faith perspective and a different set of questions. Yet almost without exception, every person I have ever encountered in my work for the Museum is profoundly moved and challenged by this history, and leaves convinced of the importance of this history and its lessons in their own work.

What are those lessons for us today? Personally, I approach words like “causes” and “lessons” with a great deal of caution. I am particularly wary of the politicization of the Holocaust, especially the easy drawing of analogies to contemporary victims or contemporary perpetrators. I suspect we might all be able to draw up such a list, but those lists would probably differ according to our own political and even religious views and as such we would be using the Holocaust as a moral exclamation point, a way of absolutizing the point we are trying to make. And as anyone who’s ever been in such an argument can testify, it very quickly polarizes things and makes thoughtful discussion impossible. If you call someone a “Hitler” or if you say that a certain set of victims is “just like the Jews,” that pretty much stops the conversation. The Holocaust, and Nazism, really are historical examples of absolute evil, and must stand on their own in the particularities of that history.

When I wrote my book on Bystanders, this was on my mind a great deal.1 It seemed to me that when we make comparisons to the Holocaust, what we are really doing is stating our own sense of moral urgency about something. We have realized that we are witnessing something that demands a response from us as bystanders, as witnesses, as citizens. The Holocaust does indeed teach us something about this because it couldn’t have happened without the active involvement or passive silence of those who were there.
So what are the particularities of this history that can teach us a larger lesson? I would start with:

* Antisemitism. This history gives us insight into prejudice in general and the ways in which prejudice becomes violent and murderous as it dehumanizes “the other.” But we cannot lose sight of the very particular history of antisemitism, which confronts Christians in particular with very painful questions. The history of Jews in Europe would have been utterly different throughout the centuries without the Christian teachings that accused Jews of “deicide” (killing Christ), and without the myths promoted by the churches that described Jews as cursed, poisoners of wells, and so forth. Nazi terror was preceded by centuries of anti-Jewish laws and violence against the Jewish people. Indeed, a great many of the anti-Jewish laws in Nazi Germany had their precedent in early church regulations. National Socialism was not a Christian phenomenon, and there were certainly Christians at the time that condemned it. Yet it is haunting to see Nazi leaders celebrating key events with gifts of gold-bound copies of Martin Luther’s writings against the Jews, or to see photographs of Catholic and Protestant leaders standing alongside Nazi leaders, their arms raised in the fascist salute, and to read church statements from the time that actually defend the persecution of the Jews. Moreover, the history of that period shows that those Christians who condemned Nazism and tried to save its Jewish victims were a small minority.

In the wake of the Holocaust, of course, a number of Christian churches throughout the world have issued statements condemning antisemitism, and expressing repentance and remorse for church complicity and silence in the Holocaust. There are over a hundred such statements by churches in this country and in Europe, by Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox leaders, and by interfaith groups. In 1994, following a visit to the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the leaders of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America issued a statement repudiating Luther’s antisemitic writings.

We know all too well that antisemitism continues in many parts of the world today, and certainly a central part of our work is to speak out and warn against this terrible hatred wherever we encounter it.

* Antisemitism and the way in which it became policy in Nazi Germany teaches us something about prejudice: about the dehumanization of others and the step-by-step process by which this occurs and is rationalized and justified. It also teaches us something about the process by which violence against the victims increases as the apathy of bystanders increases.

* This in turn teaches us something about the phenomenon of complicity: the ways in which ordinary people become involved in genocide, how they benefit, and how they come to rationalize what they do. A deeper understanding of complicity tells us something about how dictatorships function, about the role played by propaganda, and the ways in which leading institutions–such as universities, churches, and corporations–become complicit in dictatorships, thereby helping genocide to occur. One of the lessons of this history is certainly the central importance of civil liberties and the fragility of freedoms that we tend to take for granted. The early months of Nazism were marked by steady, almost daily reductions of certain rights, by growing government control of the press and the radio, and by regulations that brought everyone–from school children to housewives to civic leaders–into line with Nazism. And all these began with measures that people thought seemed harmless and legitimate.

* The Holocaust teaches us something about contemporary genocide. As I’ve noted, each genocide is different, and yet what leads us to compare them are the underlying issues that I’ve just described: prejudice, dehumanization, and the dynamics complicity and growing violence. Genocide would not be possible without these things, and the Museum in Washington is a witness not only to history, but to contemporary genocide. The Museum’s Committee on Conscience is an essential part of our work and has been instrumental, not only in drawing the attention of the world to the genocide now going on in Darfur, but in energizing people to do something about it.

* All of these topics draw a larger picture of human evil. The Holocaust teaches us something about what evil looks like–in its everyday mundaneness and ordinariness as well as in the shocking images from the camps. This in turn teaches us something about ourselves and leads us to reflect on how it might be possible for us to respond differently than those at the time of the Holocaust.

When the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum was founded, its statement of purpose included the following passage: “The Museum's primary mission is to advance and disseminate
knowledge about this unprecedented tragedy; to preserve the memory of those who suffered; and to encourage its visitors to reflect upon the moral and spiritual questions raised by the events of the Holocaust as well as their own responsibilities as citizens of a democracy.”

That is the call to us today: to reflect on our responsibilities in the troubled and violent world in which we find ourselves. There are many different ways of summing that up. One is to reflect about what it means to have a moral compass. A compass is a tool that points us in a certain direction, a tool by which we can navigate difficult terrain. Yet certainty can come in many ways, some of them quite destructive. Some people seek certainty through a rigid ideological agenda or uncritical allegiance to certain doctrine, beliefs, or prejudices. An imbued sense of morality–a moral compass, if you will–cannot be imposed but must arise out of knowledge, memory, and reflection. How we retain that sense–especially during turbulent and violent times, especially in an instance like Nazi Germany–is the big question. The history of the Holocaust shows us how all too many citizens in Nazi Germany lost their way.

It is fitting that we reflect on these issues here at the Kentucky Heartland Institute on Public Policy. Ultimately, the history of the Holocaust moves people from all walks of life so deeply because it is such a human story. We find that whatever our national backgrounds, whatever our gender, whatever our ethnicity, whatever our religion, whatever our age, we are touched and troubled by the stories of those who lived and died at the time. If we allow ourselves to be touched as human beings: to think of our commonalities, our common ground, our obligations as human beings to one another and to the greater whole, then we honor the memory of those who died and, hopefully, can help to prevent such things from happening again. The Holocaust is part of history, but the questions with which it leaves us very much concern the future. Thank you.

Editor’s Note
________________________________________

1Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity during the Holocaust is published by Praeger Publishers, 1999.

The purpose of the thesis is to explore the people profile of the Palestinian refugees, particularly of those in the Borj El Barajneh Camp, and to examine missiological strategies to reach them for Christ. Chapter 1 consists of an ethnography of the Palestine refugees and history of their exit into foreign camps.

Chapter 2 analyzes the demographics of the Borj El Barajneh people and briefly describes the effects of continuing war and hardships on them. The thesis will analyze the historical conflict between Israel and the Palestinians (including in Appendix 6 a chronological map to follow the history of each battle and retaliation). The conflicts in Palestinian camp include Lebanon’s Civil War, the “War of the Camps” in Barajneh itself, and terrorism. Each battle has carved out a piece of the Palestinian history and bulldozed a painful road for generations to come.

Chapter 3 deals with missiological strategies and their effects in Borj El Barajneh. Interviews with past and present missionaries, national Christians, and local Muslims provide data for examining missiological strategies. Different mission organizations were evaluated in respect to the effectiveness of their strategies among the Palestinian refugees. Current missiological strategies include Church Planting Movements, Chronological Bible Storying, and relief organizations (like the Inma Center, among others).

Chapter 4 then draws conclusions from the summary findings of the preceding chapters and suggests future strategies for the Borj El Barajneh Camp, comparing strategies in similar refugee situations and the future possibilities for the Palestinian refugees. Each new tactic to reach the Palestinian people is a simple suggestion for hope and peace for generations to come.

In August 2004, I began work as an English Language Senior Fellow with the United States Department of State’s Office of English Language Programs in Ganje, Azerbaijan. The director of the Ganje Education Information Center (GEIC) escorted me to Ganje from the capital, Baku. It was the beginning of my association with educational non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Ganje and throughout Azerbaijan. A few days later a meeting was held at a local university where I was to conduct English teacher training. At the entrance of the English department was a sign that read “Department of the English Grammar.” The dean of the English department sputtered English with archaically formal phrases and couldn’t be bothered to listen to anyone around him, regularly interrupting as he pleased. He and another dean repeatedly demanded that the university needed manuals. When I suggested it was books that were needed, a tedious debate ensued--one from which I was summarily excluded--as to whether books or manuals were the correct word. I gave a short needs assessment questionnaire to the “professors,” some of whom could not give detailed answers in writing. Subsequent teacher training sessions were poorly attended by the faculty, some of whom discouraged their colleagues and students from associating with me.

In general, I found that university life in Ganje ended at 2:00 p.m., with few extracurricular activities or student associations. I rarely saw faculty outside the university setting. During meetings aimed at the professional development of faculty through teacher training, all too often individuals uttered the phrase “May I go?” and excused themselves. Most every formal educational institution I worked with in Ganje never gave me many classes to teach or any responsibilities. One secondary school teacher attributed the low level of English and academic rigor at universities to some faculty wanting to do things the same way they had in the past. With low salaries and lack of support from a central government authority, some academicians have had to seek other means of earning a living, meaning at times the exacting of bribes from students and/or earning money outside an institutional setting. A faculty member at one university stated that the academic program was nearly the same as in Soviet times, with the older professors discouraging innovation. In his estimation, it would take ten to twenty years to reform the system.

In Spring 2005, an article was published in a local Ganje
newspaper claiming that foreign Christian missionaries had come to Ganje, which led some educational authorities to suspect Peace Corps volunteers and me of missionary activity. I had been visiting English classes at a local college and was abruptly told not to return. Even a year later such rumors persisted. One government inspector knew of my presence at another institute and seriously questioned my presence there despite my appointment to work there by the Minister of Education. Other rumors began in Spring 2006 that related American presence in Azerbaijan to the anticipated invasion of Iran by the U.S. military. So it was in the non-formal educational sector that I made most of my efforts in English Language Teaching, International Education, and civil society development.

A significant problem in the Azerbaijani education system is the low salary for teachers, partly responsible for bribery that exists in some educational institutions. It is a two-tiered, highly organized system in which 1) bribes are exacted by teachers for grades, certificates, diplomas and other favors, the money being passed upward through the organizational structure in percentage increments, and 2) teaching and administrative positions are purchased.1 At the secondary level, some students and parents willingly pay bribes for excused absences so that students can get out of class to study with private tutors.2 Freedom House reports that one of the most common types of bribery in Azerbaijan is procuring better grades for schoolchildren. In some cases, the state education system in Azerbaijan fulfills the purposes of instilling patriotism and adherence to authority of the ruling political party, maintaining the traditions of patronage and nepotism, while serving as a platform for exacting bribes. The system, as with other sectors in Azerbaijan, as it exists some fifteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, largely is not addressing economic, political, and social inequalities. All of this brings into question whether education in Azerbaijan could any longer be considered a public good.

In the face of static educational environments in the state sector, the bulk of my work in Azerbaijan has been in the non-formal sector, which has a much more welcoming and productive atmosphere characterized by local organizations operating more or less autonomously from the state. From August 2004 to June 2006, I worked with the following four organizations:

It should be noted that the four organizations are for the most part separate entities, though they may work on similar projects such as civil society development, English Language Teaching, and academic and professional exchanges.

AYLA

The Association of Young Leaders of Azerbaijan as an educational institution, resource and coordinating center for NGOs was created in November 1999 in Ganje by a group of young ecologists, students, and lawyers. Its mission is the improvement of the state of civil society, civic initiatives, active participation of citizens in the processes of building civil society, development of a free market economy, democratic principles, and the creation of a good atmosphere for the third sector in western regions of Azerbaijan. In September 2005, I founded the Center for English Language Learning and International Education (CELLIE) at the Leaders’ School (LS), a National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funded youth program that is part of a larger organization, the Azerbaijan Young Leaders’ Association (AYLA). AYLA registered as an NGO in 2005 under the name Young Leaders’ Education Training and Development Public Union. Much of the data collected in this research was from the Leaders' School staff and participants as my presence there was the longest and most intense of the organizations I worked with in Ganje.

AzETA

AzETA is an NGO established and officially registered in 1996. Since its establishment AzETA has worked closely with the British Council, Open Society Institute (OSI), and the United States Embassy in Azerbaijan. AzETA’s main focus is to provide support for high quality education in English Language Teaching (ELT) through the professional development of English language teachers in Azerbaijan. AzETA has a strategy of supporting ELT through different projects: teacher training, materials development, study tours, television matinees, conversation groups, workshops, and conferences. There are currently five branches, including one in Ganje. I conducted teacher training sessions at the Ganje branch as well as at other branches, encouraged organizational development, assisted with materials development, organized conferences, participated in study tours, and presented at regional and national conferences.

Bilik

Bilik means knowledge. The society is located at the Ganje Central Library and engages is an array of education and community projects, including professional development for secondary school teachers, infrastructure projects in refugee communities, computer training, and work with disabled children. I assisted them with grant applications, donor solicitation, and English teacher training in the secondary schools.

GEIC

The GEIC, an affiliate of the OSI, advises students for study abroad, offers free Internet access and computer training, and an NGO resource center, and has a sizable library of English books and information on North American and European universities. It is also a venue for English classes, TOEFL and GRE preparation, lectures, seminars, and training. At the GEIC, I gave programs about American culture, showed English language films, participated in International Education Week, and advised students, teachers, and professors about opportunities for academic and professional exchange. The GEIC offers training on a wide variety of topics including elections, organizational development, women’s issues, human rights, human trafficking, and guest speakers from international organizations such as the Eurasia Foundation, the OSI, and the U.S. Embassy.

Research Question

The following research question is posed in order to reflect on my experience in the educational NGO sector in Azerbaijan. “What has been the involvement of Ganje area NGOs (AYLA, AzETA, Bilik, and GEIC) on both educational and institutional reform and civil society development in Azerbaijan?”

Civil Society Development in Azerbaijan

Factors affecting social conditions in Azerbaijan include the oil industry's ill effects on the political development of society, ethnic conflict, the Nagorno-Karabakh war, isolationist tendencies, corruption, social apathy, and dependency on centralized authority. Some of these factors come into play in the education sector characterized by low teacher salaries, bribery, under funding, and obsolete curricula. In light of such conditions, it is argued that NGOs can play an advocacy role in education reform. Finally, the influence of International Non-government Organizations (INGO) in Azerbaijan is shown to be supportive of LNGOs, though INGO efforts at times prove to be counterproductive leading to dysfunctional organizational behavior.

The findings of a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) assessment team from 2004 that researched Azerbaijani NGOs whose activities met this definition of civil society was: “public interest advocacy organizations outside the control of the state that seek to influence the state on the behalf of public aims.” The definition was broadened to include civic activism in the form of citizens’ action and advocacy that includes but is not limited to NGO activity.3

An active civil society relies on the freedom of association, the ability of citizens to interact with one another for any purposes that are not illegal and do not infringe on the rights of others without fear of government interference and retribution. Freedom of association is a right and entitlement, not something that is granted to citizens by the government. Article 11 on Freedom of Assembly and Association of The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) guarantees freedom of association, which is further supported by ECtHR case law. Restrictions are permitted when prescribed by law, public policy, and when necessary to achieve the intended purposes of a democratic society.4 Azerbaijan’s accession to the Council of Europe in 2001 and its ratification of the European Convention on Human Rights ostensibly underscore the freedom of association and civil society development in Azerbaijan. The Constitution of the Azerbaijan Republic guarantees the equal right of persons to gather freely and form organizations with others as well. Since gaining independence in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan’s transition, not unlike that in other Newly Independent States (NIS), has encountered factors specific to civil society development, namely the processes of economic, political, and social transformation, integration into world systems, and new methods of governance.

Bagirov cites Aristotle’s view of a fully-fledged citizen as one who is involved both in governance and being governed. In the case of Azerbaijan’s transition, Bagirov sees this reflexivity in light of decentralization, a two-way street paved at the initiative of those who govern and by citizens and their associations, the latter taking over where “the helplessness and futility” of the former left off. In addition to reconstruction of the economy and governance institutions, Bagirov points out the importance of the populace realizing that local problems can be solved independently joining one’s efforts with others in public association, a position which others concur with in the context of community development.5

In more than fifteen years after independence from the Soviet
Union, this reconstruction of the public awareness of civil society is a formidable task in the face of seventy years of Soviet rule in Azerbaijan in which the state was the ultimate source for determining the public good. Although the associations such as trade union organizations, disability centers, women’s and youth organizations could be formed on the basis of self-initiative, wholly independent organizations were strictly prohibited in Soviet times.

Modernity and the Soviet System

McGhee sees civil society in light of the concept of modernity, a product of ideas of the European Enlightenment including rationality and the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of the progress and improvement of humanity. The emergence of modernity in Soviet times exercised social control through the ruling elite that promoted uniformity changing from a “gamekeeper mentality (allowing wildlife to flourish within certain boundaries) to a gardener mentality (carefully planning and managing the growth of life). In consideration of the Soviet system, it was a “counter-paradigm of modernity” emerging under the influence of Russia’s imperial past and its interaction with the West, one that was unable to accept the plurality of domestic and global concerns.6

The Soviet system was overly organized, but under
bureaucratized leading to what Rose calls an antimodern society imbued with organizational failure. Organizations often failed to operate impersonally, predictably, and according to the rule of law. Rules were often subverted by politics, bribes, interinstitutional bartering, and personal contacts resulting in an uncertain social environment. In response, the populace protected themselves from such an organizational environment through social networks that worked for the interests of a narrow circle even to the point of exploiting formal institutions. Instead of being deployed in the spirit of cooperation and trust, social capital networks may be used against an antimodern state, and Rose claims that these unmodern networks did not end with the collapse of the Soviet Union and decentralization of the Soviet system.7

Patron-Client Relations

Hyden warns that decentralization is no panacea. The control of the state apparatus at lower levels by local, traditional patrons could not only be a means of strengthening the central government, but also an impediment to the emergence of civil society.8 Dudwick and others further point to the persistence of paternalistic relationships, extended family networks, and a strong ethos of reciprocity among relatives in the former Soviet Union (FSU).9 McGhee describes such relations as wealthy, influential patrons controlling exchange relations while protecting clients in a hostile environment. The author continues by saying that patron-client relations, paradoxical in their near universal persistence in Azerbaijan as a means of influencing decisions affecting the distribution of resources, exhibit unequal relations that can be inimical to a democratic system of representation.10

In the case of Azerbaijan, Rasizade cites boundless opportunities
for black marketeering monopolized by those with connections to the ruling clan. In addition, clientalistic networks have privatized the state while the legislature and political opposition have become avenues for realizing private interests, a phenomenon to which civil society organizations are not immune. A decline in the ability of the government to maintain minimal levels of public services in education, health care, pensions, and other sectors is a daily part of life in Azerbaijan. The dependence on patronage from the regime by clients is a major reason for maintenance of the status quo for the sake of self-preservation, hardly an inducement for reform supported by civil society.11

Sabanadze demonstrates the link between the weakness of states structures and patron-client relations in terms of ethnicity in the Caucasus:

“In the context of collapsing state structures, national economies and social security, identification with one's ethnic kin became extremely important and further strengthened the role of ethnicity as a prime source of personal identification. Individuals were identified mainly in terms of their ethnic or other collective identities,which practically brought ethnic conflict from the public into the private sphere, blurring the distinction between the two and further encouraging a stigmatization of individuals solely in terms of their ethnic affiliations.”12

Non-Government Organizations and Civil Society

Where strong kinship ties are the prevalent form of association and democratic values are alien to the existing political culture, the formation of weak ties in the form of social networks may aid societies in democratic transition. NGOs conceived as weak social networks may contribute to the development of democratic values, though NGOs by no means constitute the whole of civil society or civic engagement, nor are NGOs always democratic.13

According to USAID, The 2004 Sustainability Index for Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia lacks the capacity for advocacy on a large scale and hence has a weak impact on public policy and public opinion due to underdeveloped support structures, intersectoral competition, weak relationships with constituents, and lack of positive public image.14

The lack of legal recognition, full-time employees, written rules, and independent funding leaves one wondering whether some NGOs are authentic organizations. According to one member of an INGO working in Azerbaijan, by 2005 there were 1500 registered NGOs and out of these 400 active NGOs with an office and programs in Azerbaijan. Challenges NGOs face include lack of sustainable and stable funding sources, clear goals and mission, mechanisms of support, management, planning, skills, qualifications, cooperation with other NGOs and presentation skills. The INGO worker recommends the following for improved organizational functioning: a clear mission, focus, annual strategic planning, communicating the mission to donors, public relations, transparent and participant management systems, staff orientation, training, capacity building, local partnerships, knowing the needs of the community, income generation, and private sector relations.

Civil Society in Ganje, Azerbaijan

The Bilik Society of Ganje, Azerbaijan, defines civil society as the elimination of obstacles to the active participation of citizens in the decision-making process in matters of importance to the country through the establishment of relations between citizens and local government. In view of the fact that people have accepted the transition to a market economy and civil society, a main aim of Bilik is to bring about the broadest possible participation of stakeholders in the formation of civil society. Societal problems should not be the sole responsibility of executive government powers. NGOs, communities, municipalities, local government should play roles as well. Bilik sees civil society not as a geographic space, but a social one (personal communication, April 10, 2006).

The Ganje Education Information Center (GEIC) looks at civil society development through creating an open society, as explained on the GEIC website.

“The concept of open society is based on the recognition that people act on imperfect knowledge and nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth. Open Societies are characterized by a reliance on the rule of law, the existence of a democratically elected government, a diverse and vigorous civil society, respect for minority opinions, and [a] free market economy. A closed society expends most of its energies in preserving the existing order, whereas an open society takes law and the respect for others as its starting point and creates progress and prosperity from that base.”15

The GEIC seeks to minimize traditional society and Soviet influences by putting no restrictions on participation, fostering inclusivity, and allowing individuals to choose whether to participate in activities. In contrast in some other organizations, members feel pressured to follow the will of the director. Behavior is restricted. There is a lack of places to express oneself in society and find those of like mind. Some members or other organizations lack of understanding of organization’s mission and a spirit of volunteerism.

The Leaders’ School (LS) addresses the importance of civil society development in its mission statement which seeks to improve the state of the third sector, civil society, civic initiatives, the active participation of citizens in the processes of building civil society, development of the free market economy, democratic principles, and the creation of a stable atmosphere for the third sector in the western region of Azerbaijan.

Like many other post-Soviet countries, Azerbaijan is in the transition from a totalitarian regime to democracy. Reforms in the country have touched upon all social areas: political, social, economic and cultural. The country also faces a number of problems similar to other post-Soviet countries. With the closing of many industries in Ganje, unemployment is threatening the transition from a socialistic system to a market economy. It is important for youth to have training for a useful profession, skills, abilities, and leadership which will lead to active participation in society. Youth studying at the LS take courses in Marketing, Management, Law, Journalism, English language and Computers.

The statement goes on to say that education plays a significant
role in the transition to a democratic society, and in particular in secondary education, because schools form the consciousness of future citizens, the models of behavior, and instill certain values. The goal of democratic education is the creation of conditions for forming of independent, free citizens, who possess profound knowledge. Vestiges of the old Soviet education system are still present in public education. Old teaching methods and textbooks have not changed and are inaccurately translated into Azeri, along with outdated lessons. Not only may graduates of the public school system not be prepared well for the future, but also indigent youth with no access to education end up in the street leading to the increase of crime and drug abuse.

Interestingly, in interviews with AzETA members the term
civil society was rarely if ever used. The national president, however, expressed the following things are encouraged. People feel free at AzETA because the organization isn’t related to the government. Freedom of speech exists. There is no threat of punishment or losing one’s job. There is a shared sense of responsibility through the delegation of authority, committees, and special interest groups, one of which is devoted to civic education.

At the national level, officers and the executive board are elected. The Ganje branch exhibits a more traditional management structure. The founder’s sister has been head of the organization for two years. No relationship exists with local government or the Department of Education even though several visits were made to establish ties. In the branch head’s observation, local government puts walls between itself and others. It does not want people or organizations to approach them, which was attributed to the influence of the Soviet Union. It is a stance which persists.

Conclusions

The consensus from interviews and NGO sector reports is that the overall impact of NGOs in Azerbaijan is weak. NGOs continue to face obstacles such as government hostility, social apathy, donor dependency, counterproductive donor practices, and organizational issues. There are some promising points for the NGO sector in Ganje. The first is untapped LNGO potential. The LS could easily admit five times as many students and expand programs into the western regions if it only had the resources, which will most likely not come from a single donor organization. English teachers in the regions would like to establish more AzETA branches, but at times are hindered by local education ministries, the lack of human resources, and the fact that no one in AzETA earns a salary. A Peace Corps volunteer observed that many teachers like the idea of having a branch, but are deterred when they see the amount of work that is involved on top of teaching loads, private tutoring, and family responsibilities.

Research, interviews, and my own observations show that, in general, in institutional environments in Azerbaijan, relationships take precedence over rule of law, mechanistic bureaucracy, and transparent organizational structure, decision-making, rules, goals, and policies. As alluded to earlier in the research, family and kinship ties play an influential role in a system of patron-client relations, a complex web of asymmetrical but mutually beneficial social networks influencing the exchange of resources.16 In return for protection from powerful patrons, clients must show loyalty and observe subordination at all levels, especially to key figures. One long term INGO director stated that in Azerbaijan, some NGOs are similar to government in their organizational structure: centralized with one key figure who micromanages and is the driving force of the organization. That some organizations are like a family in Azerbaijan may be not be just a metaphor.

Organizational structure, therefore, may be particularly relevant
to LNGOs, government, and donor organizations in Ganje. The numerous studies and interviews conducted in this research point to what Perrow in Bolman & Deal calls particularism, the intrusion of personal and political forces unrelated to organizational goals. Rules, policies, and standard operating procedures bring about predictability and uniformity in terms of conditions of work, task completion, and personnel issues. Vertical coordination in the form of an authority figure micromanaging employees through a strict hierarchy and subordination might be efficient in predictable situations where conformity is critical. A weakness of this kind of structure is when the organization becomes dependent on its leader.17 For example, instead of an organization's leader handling every aspect of the grant application procedure, getting a grant could be more of a shared task. This would mean, however that the leader would have to give up some control. Shared tasks would lead hopefully to a shared sense of ownership so that the leader doesn't think of the organization as his or her property or investment, as is sometimes the case according to one interviewee.

Bolman & Deal propose an alternative organizational structure with boards, committees, informal meetings, and networks that would provide lateral coordination for the completion of complex tasks in fast-changing environments. In this way, initiatives and strategy emerge from many places. The challenges LNGOs face are unique and there is no one set formula for an effective organizational structure. Whether vertical or lateral, or a blend of the two, an effective organization is one that achieves an alignment between its organizational structure and its goals.

There are numerous donor organizations active in Azerbaijan
and the Caucasus seeking to improve social conditions. Though a relatively obscure region and to a degree isolated internationally and internally, the Caucasus is of vast geopolitical significance to larger countries on its borders (Turkey, Russia, Iran), Western countries, Central Asia, and China. Conflict in the Caucasus has and will affect a globalized, interconnected world. Gas and oil riches, economic development, and macroeconomic stability have not led to better living standards for all, resulting in social divides and imbalances among the vulnerable, socially isolated, and voiceless.

Managing effective humanitarian assistance programs in
Azerbaijan requires careful consideration of local contexts. The size of Maine, Azerbaijan has eleven climate zones, distinct regions, ethnic groups, and a cultural milieu with quite different norms between regions. Many interviewees commented that a majority of INGO work, funding, and resources are centered in the capital, Baku. Successful programs in Baku may not be so successful in Ganje or in other regions. The validity of the research findings were based on attempts to gain an understanding of NGO organizational behavior in its social, cultural, political, and economic contexts through the representation of the experiences and perceptions of local actors to bring about a better understanding of local values, expectations, social norms, and networks.18

Endnotes
_________________________________________

1 Alec Rasizade, “Azerbaijan Descending Into the Third World,”
Journal of Third World Studies 21:191-220, n1, 2004.

]]>http://www.campbellsville.edu/organizational-culture-of-educationalA Study of Motivation and Self-Efficacy in University Studentshttp://www.campbellsville.edu/a-study-of-motivation-and-self-efficacy-in-university-studentsWed, 14 Aug 2013 05:00:00 GMTTeresa Phillips SpurlingTeresa Phillips SpurlingA Study of Motivation and
Self-Efficacy in University Students

Teresa Phillips Spurling

Abstract

This paper addresses a problem typical of college/university campuses. The longstanding issue of how to motivate students is not new. Many universities are focusing efforts on higher retention of students. An increase in academic motivation may be one way to target retention. Regardless of the multitude of reasons for lack of motivation, an institution can take steps to impact student motivation and self-efficacy. The reader will be guided to explore Bandura’s social cognitive theory where people plan courses of action in order to anticipate the likely consequences of these actions, and set goals and challenges for themselves to motivate, guide and regulate their activities, Maslow’s theory and other solutions.

Motivation and Self-Efficacy in University Students

The typical university student has mastered skills to prepare for gleaning information and knowledge. Career opportunities for graduates abound. Why then do college/university students often lack motivation to pursue academic excellence? Factors that influence student learning in the classroom continues to be an important concern of teachers and administers at all levels. The increase in number and diversity of university students highlights the need for intervention to address lack of motivation and self-efficacy.

Universities are becoming more diverse as evidenced by students from different cultures, English and non-English speaking students, affluent and lower socio-economic students and motivated, amotivated and unmotivated students. An increasing number of university students find themselves at the end of the semester seeking additional time to complete required coursework. Contributing causes including jobs and family responsibilities are procrastination, social life, and sometimes depression or addictions. Time management skills, over-commitment, unskilled prioritizing, and deficient study skills also contribute to the problem. Nevertheless, with sufficient motivation and self-efficacy these same students could proudly meet all required deadlines and in the process, maintain better relationships in all their interactions. This paper proposes that with commitment and intentional implementation of certain strategies the university faculty is in a position to encourage the motivation and self-efficacy of students. Purposeful change could take place through research and discussion leading to consensus on strategies to be employed.

Research shows that infants and young children appear to be propelled by curiosity, driven by an intense need to explore, interact with, and make sense of their environment. As one author puts it, "Rarely does one hear parents complain that their pre-schooler is 'unmotivated.'"1 However, whether it is attributable to environmental influences or life experiences, students arrive at the university with varying levels of innate drive and motivation.

Parenting plays a significant role in determining student motivation. According to research parental support is beneficial in that it helps to offer a sense of security and comfort in an unpredictable society as the adolescent strives for growth and self- development. Parental involvement is important to a student’s educational success all the way to the high school level.2 Relationships have been found to exist between parental involvement and such student variables as academic achievement, sense of well-being, attendance, homework readiness, grades, and emotional aspirations. Specifically, the types of parental involvement examined were assisting the student with homework, attending school programs, watching the student in sports or other extracurricular activities, helping the student to select courses and remaining informed of the student’s progress in school.3

Additional studies show parental involvement to be positively related to high school students’ academic achievement, time spent on homework, favorable attitudes toward school, likelihood of staying in school, and educational aspirations beyond the high school level.4 Permissive parenting style and a lack of parental involvement tend to force at-risk adolescents to turn to their peers. As a result, the lack of parental control and excessive peer influence may lead to improper social attitudes and behaviors, as well as a host of negative outcomes including disciplinary problems, low grades, and drug use.5

While authoritative parenting and parental involvement were effective preventive and intervention strategies for elementary and secondary students, one must look deeper to change the university student’s motivation and self-efficacy. One instructional variable, verbal praise, has often been identified as an important mediator in the enhancement of students' motivation in the classroom.6 Verbal praise impacts students' classroom achievement, homework habits, and motivation to learn.7 To understand why verbal praise might impact college/university students’ motivation, we turn to Bandura's social cognitive theory. It stands in clear contrast to theories of human functioning that overemphasize the role of environmental factors in the development of human behavior and learning. William James argued, "Introspective observation is what we have to rely on first and foremost and always."8

Bandura’s view of human behavior depicted the beliefs of people about themselves as critical elements in the exercise of control and personal agency. These personal beliefs influence people's aspirations, self-efficacy beliefs, personal standards, emotional states, and other self-regulatory influences. For Bandura, the capability that is most "distinctly human" is self-reflection, hence it is a prominent feature of social cognitive theory.9 Through self-reflection, people make sense of their experiences, explore their own cognitions and self-beliefs, engage in self-evaluation, and then alter their thinking and behavior accordingly.10

Social cognitive theory is based on self-efficacy beliefs, "people's judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances."11 Self-efficacy beliefs provide the foundation for human motivation, well-being, and personal accomplishment. People must believe that their actions can produce the outcomes they wish or their incentive to persevere in the face of difficulty is lessened and their motivation to act deterred. Much empirical evidence now supports Bandura's contention that self-efficacy beliefs touch virtually every aspect of people's lives whether they think productively, pessimistically or optimistically; how well they motivate themselves and persevere in the face of adversities; their vulnerability to stress and depression, and the life choices they make.12

Bandura's key contentions regarding the role of self-efficacy beliefs in human functioning are that "people's level of motivation, affective states, and actions are based more on what they believe than on what is objectively true."13 Thus, a person’s actions are controlled more by the beliefs they hold about their abilities than by what they are actually capable of accomplishing, for self-efficacy perceptions are the main contributors to what individuals do with the knowledge and skills they possess. However, no amount of confidence or self-appreciation can produce success when requisite skills and knowledge are absent. It is important to remember, students envision their grade before they begin an examination or enroll in a course.14

People build self-efficacy by evaluating previous performance while engaging in tasks and activities. They interpret the results of those actions and use those interpretations to assess their ability to engage in future tasks or activities. In addition to interpreting the results of their actions, people form their self-efficacy beliefs through observing others perform tasks. When people have limited prior experience or are uncertain of their own capabilities, they experience insecurity. Modeling is particularly valuable when an individual is unfamiliar with a task or activity. Even experienced individuals gain self-efficacy as models teach them better ways of doing things. A significant model in one's life can help instill self-beliefs that will influence the course and direction that life will take. Self-efficacy beliefs are developed as individuals engage in life experiences and social interactions. These persuasions can involve exposure to the verbal judgments that others provide. Persuaders play an important part in the development of an individual's self-beliefs.

Past research has focused on factors such as gender, and has failed to examine factors such as ethnicity. Even if the students are studying at the same university, their cultural background, values, beliefs, etc., may be quite diverse, and it is likely that this will have an impact on their motivation, resulting in differing motivational profiles.15 In 1999, African-Americans were the nation's largest ethnic minority group.16 In 1996, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that that in 1995 there were 32 million African-Americans, and by the year 2050 the African-American population in the United States would be nearly 40 million. Educators must find effective ways to address the academic needs this culturally diverse group. Dowson and McInerney found a positive relationship between students' social goals and effective engagement in learning.17 Compared to other students, African-Americans felt less socially integrated into their fellow students' environment and the lecturers' environment. In other words, African-American students find it more difficult to achieve a satisfactory social and academic integration into the university culture.18

Maslow's theory states that when a need is unfulfilled, the individual will be academically weak. Teachers must remember that for some of their poorer students these needs may be very important. It is difficult to focus on studying if one is worried about money for food and rent. A student who is terrified to walk back to a dorm after dark will not benefit from help sessions or the availability of a computer laboratory. Proper campus lighting, police patrols, and an escort service must be offered to meet such safety needs before the student can focus on studying.

University students, away from family and high school friends may feel alone and find their needs for belonging and love are no longer satisfied. The highest level in Maslow's hierarchy, self- actualization, is the need for individuals to reach their potential. People require time to learn how to satisfy their needs. This self- actualization occurs in mature individuals, and, based on Maslow's studies is uncommon.19

A program to increase student motivation and self-efficacy must be based on consciousness-raising or conscientization, a term popularized by Paulo Freire to describe a process of self-awareness through collective self-inquiry and reflection.20 Other strategies may include the engagement of faculty in social activities with students; faculty sessions for discussion of research and best practice; and sessions to increase students’ ability to set goals, manage time, and explore careers. Finally, efforts must directly or indirectly focus attention on the thinking of students. If students who possess self- efficacy and motivation learn to think productively, are optimistic, persevere in the face of adversity, control stress, and make good life choices then they are likely to succeed academically.

Factors affecting student motivation are varied. Some students don’t have a clear vision regarding their reason for being in college. Perhaps they are heeding their parent’s advice while undecided about what they really want to do with their life. Sometimes students choose areas of study to please others, while concealing their own true interests. It takes a fairly clear purpose to motivate a student to engage successfully in the lengthy and difficult process of higher education.21 Sessions could be scheduled focusing on goal setting and career choices to clarify students’ insight and help them determine their true goal and purpose. These sessions should be flexibly scheduled to meet students’ work and study needs.

Students may need to work at part-time jobs or engage in time-consuming extra-curricular activities at the university level. The demands of academic assignments require students to have time management skills of a successful business executive. Unfortunately, many students have not had any formal training in this area. A large percentage of entering students lack useful direction with specific study methods.22 Sessions could be designed, scheduled and presented that address prioritizing, time-management, and study skills. Particular attention should focus on identifying and assisting those students who are experiencing difficulty in these areas. Research shows that many students are labeled “the silent majority.” Their plight in school is just to get through. A major difference in the outcome for them could be influenced by teaching some basic survival academic skills, such as note taking, helping develop a binder to organize their school work, and providing an introduction or orientation to the college campus.23

In order for instructors to be effective motivators they must consider individual students and diversify their teaching methods. In addition, instructors must attempt to involve students in classroom activities and to give them a sense of being able to accomplish high-level tasks.24 A major undertaking is to nurture student curiosity and use curiosity as a motive for learning through various pedagogical tactics. If a class has clear expectations and standards provided with a clear syllabus, and a sense of predictability and order, then the class will have addressed the students' need for fairness. As a class progresses, there is a need for fairness and safety to be exhibited at all levels in the grading of student assignments.25

Murray and others reported that undergraduate college students rated instructors as more effective when they displayed sociable and extroverted personality traits. The studies conducted by Erdle, Murray, and their associates also indicate that an instructor who displays an extroverted nature increases perceived instructor effectiveness.26 Therefore, a practical approach would be to make available research to encourage professors to provide social experiences for their classes.

Research shows that the role of faculty in motivating both undergraduate and graduate students is positively valued by students and perceived by both undergraduate and postgraduate students to have beneficial effects on their learning. Undergraduates and graduates share that research activity by the professor and the student enriches lectures, increases credibility, and ensures that knowledge is current. A high level of research activity in a department will increase student awareness of ongoing research and its impact upon teaching, as well as student attitude.27 Faculty should be encouraged to share their research with students.

An increase in student motivation and self-efficacy should be reflected in an increase in successful course completion. Additionally, there should be a decrease in the number of withdrawals and dropouts and a corresponding increase in the number of students returning each semester.

Even at the university level, students value parental involvement. An adjustment to the strategies could be made by increasing incentives to motivate parents to visit campus, including invitations and/or free tickets to sports events, music recitals, drama presentations, and faculty colloquia. Perhaps dorm rooms could be made available at a reduced price for family lodging.

Students will learn what they want to learn and may have great difficulty learning material that does not interest them. Students are motivated to learn--new dance steps, the status hierarchy on campus, football strategies--learning that does not necessarily contribute to attaining the academic goals of university curricula.28

Among immigrant families, educational pursuits are an important way for youth to fulfill their lifelong obligations to assist their families and to repay their immigrant parents for their investments and sacrifices. Improving students’ motivation should be a goal for every university and efforts should be made to organize learning environments that promote the most appropriate form of motivation for all ethnic groups.29 The potential payoff of having students who value learning for its own sake is priceless. It is critical for university professors and university administrative leaders, as well as others to devote themselves fully to rekindling and maintaining students' motivation to learn.

Motivation is a dynamic process different for different individuals. Research has shown that good teaching practices can do more to counter student apathy than special efforts to attack motivation directly. The majority of students react positively to a well-organized course taught by an enthusiastic professor who has a genuine concern for students and what they learn. Thus activities undertaken to promote learning will also enhance students' motivation. To develop the drive to achieve, students need to believe that achievement is possible--which means that there are early opportunities for success. Praise builds students' self-confidence, competence, and self-esteem. Recognize sincere efforts even if the result is less than stellar. If a student's performance is weak, let the student know you believe he or she can improve and succeed over time.30

My soul is bound to the voice
Of the loon. The haunting call
Strikes a chord beneath reason's time,
And draws me back to northern woods,
Deep water lakes, with glacial marks,
Huge stones piled on southern shores,
Dragged along the ridge to fall when
Warmth returned in this new age.
The loon's voice echoes through green
Hills and hidden valleys, giving tone
To deep space within.

The pairs display in bonding cries,
And warn intruders of every kind.
Another family splits in sudden dives,
Dividing risk, diverting prying eyes.
And still the call, like a signal bell,
Whose message is not read,
Keeps sounding there and in my mind
Long days and many miles aways.

Victoria J. Barnett is Staff Director of Church Relations at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
Washington, D.C.

Michael V. Carter is President of Campbellsville University, a position he has held since 1999. Prior to that he taught sociology at Warner Southern College (Florida), Judson College (Illinois), and Carson-Newman College (Tennessee), the latter also as Chairman of the Sociology Department. In 1988, he became Academic Dean at Carson-Newman, and in 1989, Vice President for Academic Affairs, a position which later entailed the position of Provost.

Linda J. Cundiff is Professor of Art and has been a member of the University Faculty since 1982. She has exhibited works in twenty states and three foreign countries, and is a member of the Kentucky Guild of Artists and Craftsman.

Robert L. Doty is Professor of English Emeritus, having come to Campbellsville in 1973, and Director of the Summer in London program for the Private College Consortium for International Studies.

E. Bruce Heilman is Chancellor at the University of Richmond and a member of the Campbellsville University Board of Trustees.

John Hurtgen is Dean of the School of Theology and Professor of New Testament and Greek, and has been a member of the University Faculty since 1990.

Jaoko Japheth is Assistant Professor of Social Work and joined the University Faculty in 2007.

Eddie McGee is Instructor in English as a Second Language and has been a member of the University Faculty since 2006. A world traveler, he has lived in China and Azerbaijan.

Wesley Roberts is Professor of Music, with emphases in piano and musicology, and has been a member of the University Faculty since 1982. He has presented concerts as pianist and organist throughout the United States, in Europe, and in Asia.

Teresa Phillips Spurling, a lifelong educator from elementary to university levels, is Assistant Professor of Education and Director of Student Teaching. She is National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Certified and has made presentations at education conferences on the state, national, and international levels.

]]>http://www.campbellsville.edu/contributors-v-3Sharing Wisdomhttp://www.campbellsville.edu/sharing-wisdomTue, 13 Aug 2013 05:00:00 GMTDamian Dewaine PhillipsDamian Dewaine PhillipsSharing Wisdom: A Summary of Theories on the Exchange of Wisdom Between the Sayings of the Wise and the Instruction of Amenemope

Damian Dewaine Phillips, M.Th.
Chairperson: Dr. J. Dwayne Howell

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis was to present a summary of theories on the exchange of wisdom literature from Egypt to Israel, in light of the literary relationship between the Instruction of Amenemope and the Hebrew "Sayings of the Wise" in Proverbs.

In chapter 2 a literary comparison of the Instruction of Amenemope and the "Sayings of the Wise" was undertaken in order to evaluate the possibility of a relationship between the texts. Chapter 3 studied the existence of schools in both ancient Egypt and Israel, and the use of instruction texts in schools, in an effort to find similar characteristics that might point toward a common usage of the Instruction of Amenemope. Chapter 4 conducted a discussion concerning the possibility of the exchange of literature through scribes serving as international messengers, in order to suggest a possible means whereby the Instruction of Amenemope was transmitted from Egypt to Israel. Chapter 5 summarized and evaluated the material presented in the thesis and suggested areas for further study.

An excursus was conducted which discussed the possibility of literary transmission through elite emulation. The theory of elite emulation suggests that the inhabitants of Canaan and early Israel
borrowed from the culture of Egypt to symbolize their elite status and legitimate their authority among other nations.

]]>http://www.campbellsville.edu/sharing-wisdomChristian Missions in Taiwan as a Model for Evangeling Chinahttp://www.campbellsville.edu/christian-missions-in-taiwan-as-a-model-for-evangeling-chinaTue, 13 Aug 2013 05:00:00 GMTKwok-Sing CheungKwok-Sing CheungChristian Missions in Taiwan as a
Model for Evangelizing China

Kwok-Sing Cheung, M.Th. Chairman: Dr. J. Dwayne Howell

Abstract

The purpose of the thesis is to review the past missionary efforts in China and Taiwan in order to gain insight in strategic planning for future evangelism in China. Chapter 1 is a review of the history of Christianity in China and Taiwan. The chapter provides a background to understanding the state of Christianity in Taiwan today.

Chapter 2 begins with a review of the people and religions of Taiwan followed by an overview of the state of Christianity in a culturally diverse society. The remainder of Chapter 2 is devoted to a study of three models of evangelism found to be successful in Taiwan: 1) the denominational church model; 2) the independent church model; and 3) the student campus ministry model. The advantages and disadvantages of these church models are discussed.

Chapter 3 looks at some of the main obstacles in evangelism in Taiwan. It argues that evangelism must be made culturally relevant. Christian theological concepts must be contextualized to the indigenous culture and be included in the curriculum of the theological trainings of local Christian leaders.

Chapter 4 draws conclusions from the summary findings of the preceding chapters and makes suggestion for further study on the independent church model as one that most likely may find future application in evangelizing China.

Every night she sat
Wrapped in many layers
Buffered by bags of
Unknown age like old skin,
A crumpled hat, once fine,
And some parts of gloves,
Though it was not cold.
She seemed to extend a hand.
She did not speak nor plead
But I could not pass
Without leaving a coin
Or thought I did.
There never was a gesture
That made me sure.

--Robert L. Doty--

]]>http://www.campbellsville.edu/kingswayRedeem the Time, Buy a ‘Compelling Future’http://www.campbellsville.edu/redeem-the-time-buy-a-compelling-futureTue, 13 Aug 2013 05:00:00 GMTJohn HurtgenJohn HurtgenRedeem the Time, Buy a ‘Compelling Future’

Students, congratulations on your respective achievements: in business, church music, counseling, education, music, music education, social sciences, and theology. Put into service now what G.K. Chesterton called “the mother of all virtues,” gratitude. Another graduation! I know how you feel, and I’ve been to over two dozen of them. Be thankful to God for every degree. And also be thankful for the family, friends, and other benefactors (financial and spiritual) who helped you to arrive at this grand day. Be grateful that the Lord can use you even with a master’s degree.

For at least the first time, you are becoming Campbellsville
University [CU] alumni with its now one hundred-year tradition. Take your place proudly within this tradition.

First, CampbellsvilleUniversity has a tradition of being a Christ-centered institution. In the United States, until the Twentieth Century, every institution (save one) was started by Christians, with purposes that related to faith in Jesus Christ and to faithful living before God in every area of life. Russell Creek Academy was so birthed. Be a proud graduate of this place where we still care about educating people not in the mind only but also in the spirit, in the heart. Graduates, don’t be afraid to humbly yet unapologetically live your lives as witnesses to God’s grace and your most holy faith wherever you may roam.

Second, Campbellsville University has a tradition of academic excellence. We may be stuck out here in the middle of nowhere (“centrally isolated”), but you have sat under men and women fully prepared and dedicated to their tasks (whether you sat at a desk in a campus classroom or in front of a monitor in your own livingroom). You have learned from them. Go from this place to be both professional and amateur. The root word of amateur is the Latin amare, “to love.” Be a proficient professional, but be someone known not only for content but for passion. “Content is easy— passion is rare” (as they say). Wherever you serve, let your work be an impressive reflection of a CU graduate practiced in the content and passionate about the intent of your vocation.

Third, Campbellsville University has a tradition of embracing challenge and change. We might as well confess our little secret: this University from which you now graduate started as an elementary and high school (in 1906), became a junior college in 1924, a four- year college in 1959, and only a university in 1996.1 The winds of challenge and change continue to blow unabated in 2007. Master’s graduates don’t shrink back, embrace the challenges and changes that—count on it—are or will be a part of your job description.

The Bible talks about accepting challenge and change this way: “Redeeming the time because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:16). The world is off its hinges; who will set them back right? Well, from the text we all have a part to play.

Redeeming, buying something back. You lost it, you want it back, but it can be yours only by purchase.

But how do you purchase time? Is it as easy as plunking a couple of quarters into the parking meter and hoping that you can return in sixty minutes before it expires? Hardly. It somehow involves choosing to create, as Erwin McManus calls it, “a compelling future . . . . Someone decides there needs to be a tear in human history. The past as we have known it needs to come to a close, and a new future must be created.”2 This is what “redeeming the time,” means: seizing a moment, a divine moment, to create a new future. And as with most revolutions, they consist of a number of smaller decisions to part company with the herd and not allow injustice, violence, hurt, or cynicism to have the final say.

Remembering rightly, especially in this violent world. Miroslav Volf urges us to let memory be a shield (to protect) and not a sword (to harm). “Much of the conflict in the world, whether between individuals or between communities, is fueled by memory of what has happened in the past.”3 You can change your world with a grace- filled memory that refuses to let past actions keep you from working towards reconciliation with your co-worker, your neighbor, your spouse, your child.

Taking responsibility, especially in a world where we’ve turned everyone into victims. Whether you inherited the mess or made the mess, take responsibility before God to make this world a better place before you leave. Our responsibility extends as well to acknowledging that often the very systems of which we are part— that we all depend upon to preach, to teach, to heal, to trade, to govern, and to protect—may themselves induce (or, generate) the very opposite of that for which they were intended.4

The church that induces lostness instead of salvation, when the average Christian does not compare all that differently than the average pagan.

The school system that sees its test scores and student abilities decline despite escalating operating costs.

The healthcare industry that sees an increase in the number of patients who die or deteriorate because of the medical care they receive.

But it won’t help simply to point out the problems alone. Take responsibility in your sphere of influence to initiate change in churches, schools, healthcare facilities, business establishments, government centers, police and security forces. “The modern world has reached a point of systemic breakdown,” according to futurist Rex Miller. None of us can escape the consequences in this global village. Take responsibility for shaping a new future.

Redeem the time, graduates, create a “compelling future” by . . .

Living gracefully, especially in a world where lostness abounds. Add to the beauty, as Sara Groves so aptly sings, by living gracefully.5

“We come with beautiful secrets
We come with purposes written on our hearts,
written on our souls
We come to every new morning
With possibilities only we can hold, that only we can hold.

Redemption comes in strange places, small spaces
Calling out the best of who we are

And I want to add to the beauty
To tell a better story
I want to shine with the light
That’s burning inside

It comes in small inspirations
It brings redemption to life and work
To our lives and our work

It comes in loving community
It comes in helping a soul find it’s worth.

This is grace, an invitation to be beautiful
This is grace, an invitation.”

As another singer, the Irishman Bono, sings, “Grace finds goodness in everything,” and “Grace makes beauty out of ugly things.”6 Graduates, live gracefully . . . find goodness, make beauty, and add to the beauty by becoming God’s grace in a lost world.

Finally, I could tell you how important, if not more so, the end of a thing is from the beginning. But you know that. God placed in your heart and hands a desire to journey further academically. And you fell for it! And so you began, and now you have ended. As you stand again at the beginning, be ready in your various spheres of influence to redeem the time—remembering rightly, taking responsibility, and living gracefully—to create a “compelling future” where people catch a real vision of the justice, peace, and joy that faithful Christian living yields.

God bless you and God bless Campbellsville University, in the name of the Father, who sent the Son, who sends the Holy Spirit, and who is now sending you into a world that needs your gifts and calling. Thank you.

]]>http://www.campbellsville.edu/redeem-the-time-buy-a-compelling-futureYou May Not Know Where You Are Going Until You Get Therehttp://www.campbellsville.edu/you-may-not-know-where-you-are-going-until-you-get-thereMon, 12 Aug 2013 05:00:00 GMTE. Bruce HeilmanE. Bruce HeilmanYou May Not Know Where You Are Going Until You Get There
So Don’t Be Surprised If You End Up Somewhere Else

E. Bruce Heilman

Commencement Address
Campbellsville University
May 5, 2007

President Carter, Chairman Morris, members of the Board, faculty, staff, family and friends of graduating seniors, and especially to you who are graduating…

There once was a man to whom all respects must
be paid;
He never smoked, nor drank, nor kissed a pretty
maid.
Then one day he passed away and his insurance was
denied
They said a man who had never lived, never could
have died.

If my introduction suggested otherwise, be assured that I will surely die and that won’t be as far into the future as it once was due to the fact that I am in my eightieth year.

To you graduates I am ancient, but to your grandparents, I am simply in advanced youth. But with age in mind, you graduates won’t walk out on me, as you will want to see whether I’m still standing when I finish my address.

Some say that with age comes wisdom, but for some, age just slips up all by itself. But irrespective of my age and with all my years of learning, there is still a lot I don’t know. In fact,

“Absolute knowledge have I none,
But my aunt’s washerwoman’s sister’s son
Heard a policeman on the beat Say to a laborer on the street That he had a letter just last week Written in the finest Greek
From a Chinese coolie in Timbuktu
Who said the peasants in Cuba knew Of a Mexican in a Texas town
Who heard it from a circus clown
That a man from the Klondike had got the news From a gang of South American Jews
About a gentleman in Bamboo
Who saw a man who claimed he knew
A high society female rake
Whose mother-in-law would undertake
To prove that her second husband’s sister’s niece Had stated in a printed piece
That she had a son who had a friend
Who knew when our troubles were going to end.”

Even with all these sources to draw from, I still don’t know when our troubles are going to end. But I do know that if the problems of the world are to be converted to opportunities that will happen as a result of leadership on the part of those of you who are graduating today. That fits Aristotle’s proclamation that “men who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends upon the education of youth.”

With these words to challenge you and in a world changing more rapidly than ever, I have titled my address “You May Not Know Where You Are Going Until You Get There So Don’t Be Surprised If You End Up Somewhere Else.” I reinforce my message with advice from Robert Frost, “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.”

I grew up on a Kentucky farm, the son of a tenant farmer. Our house had no electricity, no telephone, no indoor bathroom, no running water, and no central heat or air. In fact, the air conditioning came from cracks in the floors when air blowing under the house (which had no foundation and no insulation) found its way into the rooms. Mice and rat holes in the baseboards were covered over by tops of tin cans to discourage re-entrance.

There was no radio or television or refrigerator or washing machine. We cooked on stoves heated by wood and carried oil lamps to light our way from room to room. Because the upstairs was a converted attic, we four children slept under a hot tin roof.

My father's $30.00 a month didn't have to cover the cost of electricity or gas or water or telephone. Our refrigerator was a deep well in which to lower our milk to keep it cool. We raised our vegetables and meat and made do with chickens and eggs from the back yard. We hunted and ate squirrels and rabbits.

My parents didn't go to high school, but were very much leaders in the church and community. There was no one I knew, until I was grown, who had been to college except the preacher, who was a struggling seminary student, because the church couldn't afford a regular, full-time minister.

In this setting, there was little expectation for children growing up to do anything other than perpetuate the life around them. I could, however, observe the trucks passing on the dusty highway and visualize how wonderful it would be to become a truck driver. Having to wake at four in the morning to milk twelve or fifteen cows and to labor in the hot summer sun in the tobacco and corn fields was not what I envisioned as a desirable future.

So with that background to guide my ambitions, I saw no reason to do more than I had to do in school. Thus, I failed algebra twice, and did so poorly otherwise that I didn't qualify for a diploma after four years. I was truly a failure.

With a background such as this, how could I have spent my entire adult life in the profession of higher education as a senior officer, including twenty-one years as president of a college and a university?

It all resulted from a happenstance in history. Some might call it fate. Others might interpret it as divine providence, but surely it was unplanned, and unexpected, and unpredictable. When World War II intervened, I joined the marines after the high school principal gave me a certificate at age seventeen, suggesting that the marines could do me more good than high school.

Following combat on Okinawa and occupation duty in Japan, where I walked in the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and before I was twenty-one, I was promoted to sergeant-full of ambition, self-confident, and observant of the fact that I needed to get an education. I was discharged and applied to a senior college, where I discovered that I did not qualify for admission.

Because of my abysmal high school record, I had to settle for a small, unheralded junior college where, for the first time, I made good grades and graduated with a 3.8 average, and was elected the best all around male student. That junior college was the forerunner to the university from which you are graduating today, Campbellsville Junior College. Here I met and married my wife in my freshman year, and fathered six children before finishing graduate school.

I was now beginning my long journey in higher education, even though a few years earlier I had written to my mother that I would not go to college because I had had all the education I could stand. Over the next 50 years I would hold every functional position in higher education.

In my memoirs, about to be published, I stated I entered at the second quarter of the year and moved into a wooden barrack, reconstituted to serve as a dorm for sixteen veterans. It had a potbellied wood stove in the center and an outside shower and toilet facilities. Things were a bit primitive, but I was happy to be accepted in college. The successful reconstruction of my educational background began almost immediately.

While on a weekend to visit my folks, I received a telegram that simply said, "Boys' barracks destroyed by fire. Total loss." I lost all my clothing and every item I had purchased since leaving the Marine Corps. My English professor granted me an exemption from the paper I had written which was destroyed in the fire.

I met Betty Dobbins, also a student at Campbellsville, when she was serving as a waitress in the college dining hall. She happened to walk past me just as I was finishing my chocolate pie. I asked for another slice. She told me later that the staff had been instructed to allow only one piece of pie per student, but she brought me the one that would have been hers.

Just a few weeks after we started dating, I drove Betty to the small nearby airport, which was inactive at night, but a quiet place to "pop the question." It really wasn't a question. It was a declaration--my approach was that unless she agreed to marry me by fall, I was leaving college and moving to California. Before the evening was over, she accepted.

The war surplus trailer in which we would begin our marriage rented for the grand sum of $16.00 per month. Ours was one of several, arranged around a bathhouse that all the tenants shared.

I worked in the college woodworking shop for twelve cents an hour. On Saturdays, I worked from 6:00 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. in the meat department at the A&P supermarket. On Saturday nights I was allowed to take home any meat and produce that was too limp or aged to make it through until Monday. Supplementing these handouts, Betty and I set up a budget of a dollar a day for food.

The most important educational experiences of my life took place at Campbellsville Junior College. For me, this was the right place at that time in my life to receive the encouragement, direction, and enlightenment necessary to stimulate and motivate my ambition toward important goals. Here, I was given the opportunity to make up for my years of squandered educational opportunity. It was here that I received a solid foundation in my class work. But equally important, the knowledge and understanding that I gained during these years enriched my appreciation of solid Christian values. At Campbellsville College the faculty and administration demonstrated the highest qualities of character.

Here I discovered that education involves giving attention to the spiritual, as well as the academic, physical, and social aspects of the individual. I learned that "success in life is determined by the character of the journey, by impeccable and rigid standards and an unwillingness to settle for anything less than enduring principles."

With new confidence in myself, I entered Peabody College, now a part of Vanderbilt University. Following completion of a master's degree and three years in public accounting, I was employed by the college that had turned me down as a student, to become the second highest paid person next to the president. I was the chief financial officer at twenty-eight years of age at Georgetown College.

Emerson said after a banquet speech, "the louder he spoke of his honors, the faster we counted our spoons." So by now, if you had spoons, you would be counting. So what is my point? It is that anyone can be anything they set their mind to if circumstances are conducive, even if they had had something else in mind. So don't be surprised, as I was, "if you end up somewhere else," a place other than you presently anticipate.

According to Taylor Caldwell, "the purpose of education is to enlarge the soul, to widen the mind, to stimulate wonder, to excite the intellect, and to awaken dormant facilities for exaltation of the possessor."

Plutarch said, "a mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited."

So, as seen in the context of these definitions, education is exciting, inspiring, stimulating, and exalting. I am here today speaking to young people because I enjoy the life of the campus and of the mind. I continue to engage in youthful things like riding my Harley, while reading and remembering that age is only a place on the calendar.

Yet, I seek to be realistic and take seriously Robert Frost’s poem, What Fifty Said:

“When I was young my teachers were the old.
I gave up fire for form till I was cold.
I suffered like a metal being cast.
I went to school to age to learn the past.

Now when I am old my teachers are the young.
What can't be molded must be cracked and sprung.
I strain at lessons fit to start a suture.
I go to school to youth to learn the future.”

The lesson here is that at whatever age, we continue to learn if we have an open mind. And learning is the best medicine for deferring old age.

Some years ago when flying out of Montreal, Canada on an Alitalia jet, our flight was aborted about halfway down the runway. We returned to the terminal and after a flurry of activity, we again headed down the runway and lifted off. As a flight attendant passed by, I asked what happened. "The pilot didn't like the way the right engine sounded," she said. When I asked what they did about it, she remarked, "We changed pilots."

In this day and time we must learn to expect the unexpected. I never dreamed that, with 198 students at the time, Campbellsville College would become this university, or that I would serve on its board, or that a building would bear my name, and another, the name of my wife, or that I would give this commencement address with a granddaughter in the graduating class, or that I would be honored with a distinguished alumni award and an honorary degree.

Certainly, if it could happen to me, it could happen to any one of you. So don't be surprised if you end up someplace other than you anticipate, even if you didn't intend or expect to be there.

But irrespective of where that is, my challenge to you is to keep on learning so that you will be prepared to accept what god-given opportunity may come your way. Above all, do something of which you will be proud and which serves mankind, so that you will know, with Edwin Markham, that...

There is a destiny that makes us brothers;
none goes his way alone,
All that we send into the lives of others,
comes back into our own.

A century-old slice of music history arrived on the campus of Campbellsville University in early 2007 when a Farrand and Votey Organ was moved from Nashville, Tennessee, to the George W. and Marie T. Ransdell Chapel. The organ was built in 1894 for Christ Church in downtown Nashville, as a modest instrument of approximately fifteen ranks.1 Over the course of many years it has been rebuilt and enlarged to its present size of 51 ranks and 3,014 pipes. That Campbellsville University could acquire such a treasure was in itself a miracle, considering few universities nowadays are in a financial position to afford an organ of this size. But the miracle of a pipe organ is that it can be rebuilt and enlarged for much less expense than the purchase of a new instrument. Such would be the story of Farrand and Votey's pioneering instrument from the 1890's.

At the time Christ Church contracted with Farrand and Votey for an organ in June 1894, the church was moving into a new sanctuary and desirous of a fine instrument for its new facility. William R. Farrand (1854-1930) and Edwin Scott Votey (1856-1931) worked for Whitney Organ Company in Detroit and when Whitney retired in 1887, the two joined to establish their own company. The company was soon expanded through the acquisitions of two small organ building firms, Granville Wood (1890) and Roosevelt (1892). Always seeking new innovations, Farrand and Votey employed the most modern construction techniques of the time, using several recent developments patented by Roosevelt and a few of their own. Their technique paid off handsomely, for they quickly reached national attention with important installations in key locations across the United States. At the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, they exhibited two organs, including a four-manual instrument in Festival Hall. Undoubtedly, these accomplishments attracted the attention of Christ Church, as it did others.2

Farrand and Votey's new organ for Christ Church was a three-manual instrument of approximately fifteen ranks. It was played for the first time during the opening services for the new building on Sunday, December 16, 1894. The organist was accompanied by a quartette plus a “chorus choir” of three ladies and fourteen men. The organ used the newly developed electro-pneumatic action, a revolutionary technique for the time, and had separate chests for each stop with individual valves for every pipe. Its keyboard was attached to the instrument, as in tracker actions, although the original plans had called for it to be set across the chancel in a console. The organ was considered the best to be obtained for the time and was the only one of its kind in southeastern United States. As might be imagined, it quickly became a source of pride for the church and city.

The new instrument drew its electrical power from a series of four large batteries for key action and obtained wind pressure from a water pump. The batteries were expensive to maintain and proved to be unreliable. Little to no maintenance seems to have taken place during the first dozen years. During this period, there were no fewer than seven different organists. In 1906, Arthur Henkel was hired as organist/choirmaster, and entrusted to the care of the instrument. A committee was formed and before the end of the year, Orla D. Allen, a builder who had been with Farrand and Votey, was contracted to restore the instrument. Allen installed a new electrical Holtzer Cabot rotary transformer, or motor-generator for key action and a Ross hydraulic engine for wind pressure. He releathered the organ, rebuilt much of the internal working parts of the console, and moved the latter across the chancel, as the original plans detailed. The work took six months and was said to be thorough and complete in church documents.

In the years to follow the organ served as the principal ‘music’ vehicle for worship services and concerts. Henkel gave concerts on the new instrument to demonstrate its capabilities. One such concert program dated December 5, 1909, included J. S. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and Boëllmann's Suite Gothique, as well as lesser known works by G. M. Dethier, Edwin Lemare, and Edward d'Evry.

A set of chimes with twenty bells was presented for the organ by Jane Washington Ewing in memory of her husband Felix Grundy Ewing in 1936. They were dedicated and heard for the first time on October 28, 1936.3 Later, a Schulmerich carillon was given by Louise Bransford McGavock in memory of her parents William Settle and Noda McGavock Bransford in late 1944. With no place to install the gift, a front tower for the church was constructed in 1947 and the carillon was installed therein.4

By 1940, Henkel had noted to the church that the relays between the console and the organ had deteriorated to the point that repairs were needed.5 Pilcher Organ Company from Louisville, Kentucky, was engaged the same year to install a new console (with relays built inside) and seven new ranks. Company records show that by the time work was complete, Pilcher had added nine new ranks. These consisted of a Gemshorn 8' on the Great; Vox Celeste 8', Aeoline 8', and Trompette 8' on the Swell; Flute Celeste 8' and Unda Maris 8' on the Choir; and a Flute 8', Octave 8', and Super Octave 4' in the Pedals. In addition, three ranks were revoiced: the Trumpet 8' (Great), Oboe 8', and Vox Humana 8' (Swell); and the Clarinet 8' (Choir) was given new bass. By the time work was finished in September 1940, the organ was said to have been enlarged to 2,438 pipes.6 Pilcher's fee for these additions and service was $7,298.7

Further expansion of the organ began to be discussed after World War II and a new console was installed by Möller Organ Company in 1955. This console, the third for the organ, is still in use today. Tonal improvements were made a few years later in 1959.

Henkel continued service at Christ Church until his retirement in 1959. He had served a total of fifty-three years as organist/choirmaster. In honor of his ministry, the church dedicated the organ to Henkel upon his retirement. He was succeeded by Peter Fyfe, who served in the same capacity for the next thirty-five years, until 1994.8 During Fyfe's years of service many fine musicians from across the country came to Nashville and played the organ in either church services or concerts, including the American composer and organist Leo Sowerby, John Scott (organist at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London), and Fred Swann, among others. An unusual event was the first performance of a Mass for Moog synthesizer and organ given in Christ Church by Nashvillian Gregory Woolf in the early 1970's.9

In 1967, Fyfe and Christ Church turned to A. W. Brandt and Company of Columbus, Ohio, for extensive work releathering much of the instrument and repairing pneumatics and pipe boards. An extensive contract detailing the operation was signed in September for the sum of $16,535. The choir organ was expanded in a second agreement with Brandt two months later which called for the installation of six new stops in the choir and one in the great. Additions in the choir included a new Rohrflute 8' (replacing the Concert Flute 8'), Spitz Principal 4' (replacing the Rohrflute 4'), Nazard 2⅔ (replacing the Flute Celeste 8'), Blockflute 2' (replacing the Harmonic Piccolo 2'), Cymbal III (replacing the Geigen Principal 8'), and Krumhorn 8' (replacing the Clarinet 8'). A new Gedeckt 8' (replacing the Doppel Flute 8') was placed in the Great. The total cost for these additions was $6,730.

The maintenance and care of the organ was entrusted to Dennis Milnar in 1968 and has remained with him and Milnar Organ Company to the present day.10 A newcomer to Nashville from upstate New York, Milnar soon established his own company, and developed a business which has serviced organs throughout Tennessee and in surrounding states. Under Milnar's guidance, a new Tierce 13/5 was added to the Choir in 1974. Additional work was done on the organ throughout the 1980's, including releathering the console pneumatics in 1981, converting the Double Open Diapason to a 32' Bourdon in 1984, releathering the wind chests in 1987-88, and installing a Scharf III, Trombone 32', and other stops in 1989. The expression machines were releathered in 1991.

While many of these changes were being made to the organ, discussion within Christ Church began to develop following World War II on the placement of important items within the chancel. Those concerned with liturgical renewal suggested the baptismal font, pulpit, and altar of the church be brought forward from the back wall to the front of the chancel for closer contact with the congregation. Similarly, efforts to study the possibility of placing the organ in the balcony began during the 1960's after Peter Fyfe had been organist for several years, but there was never a coordinated effort to any of these ideas until after 1980, when Rev. Tom Ward became rector. Ward enthusiastically supported changes in the liturgy laid out in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, and it was under his encouragement that church leaders studied and retained a liturgical consultant to suggest changes. A new design was approved in 1990 which called for the altar table, with adjoining pulpit and baptismal font, to be moved close to the front of the chancel. These changes were completed in 1992 with the installation of a new altar. Shortly thereafter, discussion turned more decidedly toward moving the organ and choir to the balcony, and plans began to be developed for this purpose. As these plans developed, various organ consultants agreed that the Farrand and Votey could not satisfactorily be reworked and installed in the balcony. Consequently, the decision was made to purchase a new organ rather than move the existing instrument to the balcony. Renovation of the balcony for this purpose was completed in 2003 and an impressive 60-rank Lively-Fulcher organ was installed. The new organ was played for the first time on June 1, 2003, by church organist Michael Velting.11

With these changes complete, the church no longer needed its Farrand and Votey organ and placed it for sale. Along the same time, the initial stages for designing the new Ransdell Chapel for Campbellsville University were put into place. Upon learning of the availability of the Farrand and Votey organ in October 2003, University Organist Nevalyn Moore and Wesley Roberts approached University President Michael Carter and received permission to investigate the possibility of acquiring the instrument for the new chapel. As they visited the church and played the organ, they realized that the organ would serve well as both a service organ to support the University's Chapel services, and a concert organ to support the academic program. Upon Moore’s and Roberts' recommendation, with the assistance of Dennis Milnar, the organ was purchased for $30,000. The University then engaged Milnar Organ Company to convert the console to solid state technology, rebuild, redesign, move, and install the instrument in Ransdell Chapel.

The purchase of the organ at the early stages of design for Ransdell Chapel enabled architects to provide adequate space and facilities to house the instrument. Ground breaking for the Chapel was on October 25, 2005 (see related article "The Ransdell Chapel Story" by Michael V. Carter, also in this issue). Two additions were offered as gifts to the University for the organ. James and Nevalyn Moore, Campbellsville University School of Music faculty, gave a Zimbelstern, and Maynard and Jewel Faye Roberts of Ocala, Florida, gave a full set of trompette-en-chamade.

Excitement grew over the next year and a half as Ransdell Chapel was being built. As construction neared completion, Milnar began delivery of the organ in February 2007, in a series of six weekly trips from their shop in Eagleville, Tennessee. The initial delivery on February 20 brought many of the largest parts of the organ, including the huge wooden Sub Bourdon pipes and wind chests. Students and faculty joined the Milnar crew in unloading its precious cargo from week to week as pipes and equipment arrived.12The Central Kentucky News Journal featured a front-page story on the organ in its April 5, 2007 issue.

The installation was completed in time for the dedication of Ransdell Chapel on April 18, 2007. University Organist Nevalyn Moore was at the console for the momentous occasion. Later in the summer, the trompette-en-chamade arrived and was installed in the rear of the Chapel for antiphonal effect. The Chapel was also equipped with a Bechstein concert grand piano built in 2002, and a new Yamaha upright piano in an adjoining class/rehearsal room. Both instruments were gifts by friends of the University.

The organ was formally dedicated in a recital by Nevalyn Moore on September 4, 2007. On the program were selections by Albert Travis, Johann Sebastian Bach, Gordon Young, James Moore, Jean Langlais, and Charles Marie Widor. The organ has since come to be admired in its new setting for its visual and musical beauty, and treasured for its capabilities and rich heritage.

Christ Church Cathedral Specifications of the Original Farrand and Votey Organ13

1 In 1998, the church was consecrated a cathedral and its name changed to Christ Church Cathedral.

2 Including St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church in Louisville, Kentucky, which also purchased an organ from the firm in 1894. Farrand
and Votey’s business was dissolved in 1898 and Votey Organ Company was established. No sooner was the new company established than it was purchased by Aeolian Organ Company. The changes were without doubt prompted by Votey’s success as the inventor of the pianola in 1895, and his desire to explore its commercial possibilities. For more details on these developments, see www.pianola.org/factsheets/votey.

4 The carillon was played until the 1980's, when it was no longer possible to obtain replacement parts to maintain the equipment.

5 The author is indebted to Dennis Milnar for providing a copy of Henkel's brief history of the organ as well as another brief history by an unknown author. Both are undated but were undoubtedly written after 1940.

6Nashville Banner, September 18, 1940. Erroneously, the newspaper reported that chimes had been added at this time.

7 The author is indebted to Jim Miller and Keith Norrington of Miller Pipe Organ for providing copies of pages from Pilcher's service ledger detailing the transaction. Unrelated, but as an interest to Campbellsvillians, is a separate entry on one of these pages that Pilcher had recently repaired the organ at First Methodist Church in Campbellsville following fire damage.

8 Peter Fyfe (b. 1923) also served as an adjunct faculty member at the Blair School of Music from 1964-2004. He was ably assisted by his wife Lois. The author graciously expresses appreciation to Peter Fyfe for regarding the organ and its history.

9 Woolf taught at Peabody College and was a neighbor of the Milnars. Their families became close friends, and after Woolf died in his early thirty's from cancer, the Milnars named their last son Gregory in his honor. Woolf's Mass was sung at Washington Cathedral for its second performance.

10 Milnar’s first service call was for a touch tuning. Company records show his fee was $20.

11 The author expresses appreciation to Fletch Coke, Christ Church
Historian, and Bill Coke, Chairman of the Organ Committee, for supplying details on changes which took place within the Sanctuary, as well as Michael Velting, for additional information on the history of the organ.

Ransdell Chapel is a beacon of Campbellsville University's Christ-centered educational focus as a Christian university in the Baptist tradition.1 What began as a prayer became a reality because two incredibly generous individuals, Dr. George W. and Marie T. Ransdell, provided the lead gift.

It was just a decade ago, on our first visit to Campbellsville University, when Debbie and I drove through the campus and walked its tree-lined sidewalks, greeted along the way by warm, smiling faculty and students. After we toured nearly every facility, it struck me that Campbellsville University had no formal facility to hold her corporate worship services. I believe the heart of a Christian school is largely symbolized by her chapel, and this nearly century-old institution was in need of a chapel.

We were told that growing numbers of students through the years had necessitated changes in the location of chapel services, from the historic Russell Creek Academy administration building, to the current Administration Building, to the Alumni Building, to the Student Activities Center, to Powell Athletic Center and then, from time to time, to the facilities of Campbellsville Baptist Church.

Although we can worship God no matter the condition or location of our surroundings, I as a new president placed the construction of a chapel among my top priorities. I felt we needed a designated place that would say to our community, and to the world, that Campbellsville University is Christian and that a Christian worldview shapes the mission of our university.

I began earnestly praying that God would somehow, someday bring to Campbellsville University an individual or family whose heart burned with the same desire as many others on our campus to fund the construction of a new chapel facility where our university community could gather to praise and worship God. As a Baptist, I see worship as the first step toward serving others. Hence, a chapel building per se would serve as the starting point for servant leadership and missions. If we are to love God and our neighbors (Mark 12:28-31), then the chapel experience and an actual building in which to worship the Lord seemed essential to Christian college life for students and faculty alike.

As I began to learn more about the University during my first months, we employed several assessment techniques to help prioritize needs. In the analyses, students scored a chapel as the greatest need on campus. Many alumni, trustees, faculty and administrators placed a chapel as one of several important buildings needed in order to truly serve students.

Throughout the coming months, the trustees, faculty, staff and coaches prayed for direction.

God answered our prayers, working through Louisville trustee Dr. George Ransdell and his wife, Marie. A breakthrough came in their home as we prayed together. I remember looking up at Marie who had tears in her eyes as she whispered, "I can’t stand the thought of those children going to the gym to worship.”2

In my fourth year as president, this godly couple announced their intention to provide a $1 million lead gift toward the construction of what would be known as Ransdell Chapel.

George said that he and Marie were inspired to give to the chapel project because of Campbellsville University’s unswerving devotion to its Christian mission and to the fact that the students were in need of a place of spiritual dignity to worship on campus throughout the week.

I’ll never forget George’s words in the beginning, “We have made this gift to Campbellsville University not to receive credit, but to give credit to God’s glorious love for us all. None of us, not even Marie and me and our children and grandchildren, would be anything had it not been for the saving grace of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It is imperative that each one of us, during this lifetime, takes a stand for good and for God’s plan of salvation.”3

After that first defining moment of generosity, many challenges would follow for the leadership of the university. The work of creating a chapel began in earnest, balancing design, location and budget realities. To date approximately 400 individuals have joined the Ransdells in making gifts to help pay for the chapel. Several friends have made sacrificial gifts to see the chapel project move forward. George and Marie would come forth several more times to assist in helping to cover this cost of the much needed facility.

While Ransdell Chapel stands facing Hoskins Street today as if it has always belonged there, choosing that location came after many other ideas were prayed about and tabled. At one point we thought of tearing down an older building and placing it in the middle of campus. As one can imagine, this was the catalyst for a whole series of other conversations about the university’s master plan and her future.

Preliminary designs were reviewed by members of the Board of Trustees at regular meetings and at various committee meetings. Plans were worked over and over again. Hours upon hours were spent in planning and assessing options.

Many trustees, administrative staff and faculty gave their best efforts in planning so that a beautiful cost-effective building could be built. Much thought went into the question of purpose for the building. The Ransdells and others decided the building would be a chapel, used exclusively for the purposes of teaching, preaching and sacred music. It would not be for theater. Much of the design revolved around the decision to purchase the historic pipe organ from Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. Everyone was in agreement that a grand pipe organ was a necessity for the chapel.

As the interior of the chapel came together, we were to be given another significant gift from the Ransdell family, this one from George and Marie’s son, Michael, in the form of a wonderful Bechstein grand piano. When the beautifully restored antique Farrand and Votey organ and the grand piano are both are played together, it sounds like the gates of heaven are opening up. (See related article “Farrand and Votey Organ Installed in Ransdell Chapel” by Wesley Roberts, also in this issue.)

Fundraising challenges had to be balanced with the everyday needs of the growing university. There were times when it seemed almost too much to ask for after having just celebrated the addition of the tremendous E. Bruce Heilman Student Complex.

The chapel groundbreaking took place on an unforgettably cold October 25, 2005 when heaters inside large tents were required. The 800-seat chapel was projected to be complete in 16-18 months. George and Marie were unable to attend the groundbreaking but their son Michael, representing them, said, “I wish my Mom and Dad could have been here today to see the joy and pleasure of the people celebrating this new chapel. My parents and I are equally concerned that this bring glory to God. I believe, particularly based on what I've heard today, that that is going to occur. I pray that many are brought to faith, to believe in the saving grace of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.”4

Every day was one of anticipation with the Campbellsville University website camera trained on the chapel as construction progressed for observance over the Internet. Fervent prayers and staying true to our mission kept the chapel going up.

A special Day of Prayer was held on December 11, 2006 when it was time to place the steeple and cross on Ransdell Chapel. The steeple was dedicated to the late Dr. Jerry Bennett, former chair of the Board of Trustees, who died May 30, 2006. He would have loved that moment on what he had such a short time before called ‘Holy ground’ at the chapel groundbreaking. Dr. Bennett, a number of trustees, both current and former, faculty, staff, coaches and alumni knew the services to be held in the sanctuary would change lives for eternity. Several of us wrote our names and a message on the cross in honor of Jerry who had been among the first to believe we could make the chapel a reality. Campbellsville Industries, who manufactured the steeple, sent several of its representatives to watch one of Jerry’s business partners, Wilbur Cox, place the cross high on the steeple. One could not help but believe that Jerry was peering down from heaven on Mr. Cox as he put the final touch on the steeple.

The cornerstone set the morning of the Day of Prayer read: Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it (from Psalm 127:1).

During a candlelit prayer walk through the chapel as the Day of Prayer came to a close, students, faculty, staff and alumni were asked to tour the building and pray for the various persons who would be participating in the many programs in the chapel. Ransdell Chapel was built to withstand being in use every hour of the day.

Hundreds of scripture verses were written on the raw concrete and unfinished walls that day in preparation for the chapel to receive her finishing touches. Students, faculty, staff, alumni and members of the community came together to share their favorite verses as we prayer-walked the chapel.

At the pinnacle of the University’s Centennial Celebration, just under a thousand people crowded into the newly-completed Ransdell Chapel for the official dedication service held April 18, 2007. All our voices were joined together in a high-church celebration of praise offered up in special music, song and God’s Word. George and other trustees were with me on the platform in that unforgettable moment. Our joy was overflowing as we gazed out into the faces of alumni, current students, faculty, community members, staff, coaches and special guests filling that sanctuary. One could sense how humbling and thankful everyone felt–Campbellsville University has a chapel–not just another building, but a chapel that will serve her students for years and years.

I took in the beauty of the building, the unique blend of glass, wood and steel, the purity of sound and the light of God’s world coming through her majestic windows. All were the results of so much planning, hours of prayerful consideration, hard work, design and re-design.

A highlight of the celebration was Ephesian Trilogy, a musical work created especially for the occasion and presented by the combined University Chorale and Concert Chorus, the University Orchestra and Organ, by noted American composer Jeff Cranfill, who was in the audience. We were blessed to have the students and faculty from the School of Music under the direction of Dr. Robert Gaddis, dean, assisted by Dr. David McCullough, Dr. Frieda Gebert, Dr. Wesley Roberts and Mrs. Nevalyn Moore.

Leaders of the church in attendance included guest speaker Dr. Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and pastor of the First Baptist Church of Taylors, S.C.; and Dr. Bill Mackey, executive director of the Kentucky Baptist Convention, along with others from Convention offices in who were present. The call to worship was given by Dr. John Hurtgen, dean of the School of Theology; Old Testament scripture reading of Psalm 100 by Rev. George Gaddie (’42), former member of the Board of Trustees; and New Testament scripture reading of Colossians 3:12- 17 by Dr. Sarah Stafford (’89), chair of the faculty and associate professor of English.

The invocation was given by the Rev. Ed Pavy, director of Campus Ministries, followed by a statement of the purpose of the chapel by Dr. Frank Cheatham (’65), vice president for academic affairs.

The Rev. David Walters (’97 and ’04), vice president for admissions and student services, thanked the Ransdells on behalf of all the students who were part of the dedication ceremony and all who are to come after them.

The Rev. John Chowning, vice president for church and external relations and planner of the dedication service said he believed Ransdell Chapel would be pivotal in the next 100 years.

Other program participants included Dr. David Morris, chairman of the University Board of Trustees; Dr. Skip Alexander, pastor of Campbellsville Baptist Church; the Rev. Todd Parish, director of Kentucky Heartland Outreach; Justin Watson (’07), president of the Baptist Campus Ministries; Corri Jermaine Irving, senior, who read his poem “Ransdell Chapel”; and Dr. Robert Clark, vice president for academics emeritus and director of missions for the Taylor County Baptist Association, who presented Dr. Carter with a check from the Association to assist with the remaining chapel debt.

Dedication day was one that will live forever in the minds of those who joined together and shared it in the new chapel.

As the semester came to a close, the first graduate commencement was held May 4, 2007 in the chapel, followed by the first summer camp meetings. The largest camp that first summer had 700 members. They were able to use Campbellsville University solely because we had a chapel large enough to hold their numbers required for evening worship.

The first opening convocation was held on August 29, 2007 in Ransdell Chapel–another memorable ceremony in the history of the school. Campbellsville University began a new academic year with thankful hearts as we officially opened school in the Chapel.

Another first has just taken place at this writing, the first wedding was held in Ransdell Chapel on March 29, 2008. I am reminded of Michael Ransdell’s words from the groundbreaking, “There's even a chance that students from the university may become married in the chapel and that would be a wonderful and miraculous thing.”5

He was right. The first wedding is just one of what will be many joyous celebrations the chapel was built to house.

Ransdell Chapel is the result of people who caught the vision, prayed and worked to make it happen. I am humbled and deeply thankful for those kind and gentle hearts who gave of themselves. Without these good and faithful people Campbellsville University would not be where she is today, standing forth to provide an excellent education through a Christ-centered approach.

May all who enter Ransdell Chapel have their lives enriched by the good news of Jesus Christ.

________________

Endnotes

1 With thanks to Linda Waggener, Joan McKinney and John Chowning for their assistance with this article.2 Campbellsville University website news archives, December 18, 2006, www.campbellsville.edu/news/2006/12_18.asp.3 Marc C. Whitt, “God Gave Us This Money a Dollar at a Time,” Campbellsvillian, Winter 2002, p. 4.4 TV-4 coverage of Ransdell Chapel groundbreaking, October 25,
2005.5 Ibid.

It is a pleasure to welcome readers to this third volume of The Campbellsville Review. The Review began in 2002 through the efforts of founding editor Mark Medley. Its first two volumes were
published under his editorship. Like faculty journals in other institutions of higher learning, The Campbellsville Review quickly established an air of scholarship and research on campus which came
to be recognized both internally and externally. Readers will find that same level of scholarship
and academic inquiry in these pages as well.

In the dozen or so years since Campbellsville College was renamed Campbellsville University, the pace of change has accelerated beyond anyone’s imagination. This “fourth season” of
success, as it is occasionally referred to, has seen enormous growth in the student body and campus
facilities. This growth was signaled over the past year when the number of full-time faculty
reached one hundred, an unimaginable figure when this writer arrived on the scene twenty-six years
ago to join forty-two other faculty members.

Among the many developments in recent years has been the construction of Ransdell Chapel. This facility marked the fulfillment of the dream of many in the University community as the institution
sought to enhance its mission in Christian higher education. Two articles in this issue chronicle
the development of the facility, and the editor expresses appreciation to President Michael V.
Carter for accepting his invitation to write an article on “The Ransdell Chapel Story.” An
additional article by the editor chronicles the history of the Chapel’s Farrand and Votey
organ, while Linda J. Cundiff draws our attention to the center of the building’s architectural
features on the journal’s cover.

Readers will find two commencement addresses by E. Bruce Heilman and John Hurtgen fascinating, even if read out of their original context. The first presents an exhilarating story of the author’s life, with the admonition to graduates to be ready for wherever life’s challenges may take them, and the second urges graduates to use time wisely to buy a “compelling future.” The issue of human domination over other humans is explored in Victoria Barnett’s compelling assessment of causes and lessons from the Holocaust, as well as in
Jaoko Japheth’s revealing study of violence against married women in areas of Kenya. Will we homo
sapiens ever be able to love and respect one another? There is still hope...

Educational effectiveness is explored in Teresa Spurling’s detailed study of motivation and self-efficacy in university students while Eddie McGee reports on educational challenges he encountered teaching in post-Soviet Azerbaijan.

The mystique of life comes to us fresh and alive through two poems by Robert L. Doty and through Linda J. Cundiff’s pen and ink drawing of two lambs. While the lady in Kingsway could be found
nearly anywhere, it reminds me of the blind erhu players my wife and I occasionally heard on
sidewalks in China several years ago, and evokes strong images of a life so distant, yet so close
to our own.

Lastly, the editor expresses appreciation to the Editorial Board for its guidance throughout the formation of this issue, as well as to Anne Gibbs, editorial assistant, whose command of computer
skills often came to my rescue.